


Bionic Woman: Rebuilt

by Gatac, Punkey



Series: Rebuilt [1]
Category: Bionic Woman (2007)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-02-11 18:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2078541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gatac/pseuds/Gatac, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punkey/pseuds/Punkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Sommers is just a bartender trying to get by - until a car crash changes her life forever.</p><p>Rebuilt aims to rewrite the 2007 series from the ground up to be both more character-driven and feature a stronger overarching plot. Mixing in elements of military fiction and spy-fi, Rebuild will appeal to readers who are interested in the technology, tradecraft and transhumanist themes that are part of the setting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Rebuilt! For those of you who are only joining us now, here's a short retrospective. The project started in 2008; Kasey and I have produced five stories so far, one of which is currently still ongoing (and will be running parallel to the main plot for a while yet). However, as we went further, we distanced ourselves from more and more aspects of the original "pilot" story, to the extent where we finally concluded that it was no longer a suitable entry point for new readers. For this reason, we're starting the pilot over, with six more years of writing skills and a much clearer idea of where we want this to go. You can find the "old" stuff over at ff.net under my profile:
> 
> https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1712233/Gatac
> 
> The basic plan is that we'll be rewriting the first story here, and probably parts of the others, too. As we go along, we'll bring the stuff we intend to keep here, so we'll build up the full portfolio over time. We're really looking to make this revision much easier to follow for new readers, but if you just can't wait for us, feel free to read up on the "messy" versions. When we're through with the rewrites, new material will come. Due to time constraints on both our parts, the timeframe can be a bit shaky and updates can take a few months - but we won't leave you high and dry, pinky swear. We've got a plan, we've been at this for years now, and we very much intend to see it through.
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy the story.

The ring of metal on ceramic echoed off the walls of the upscale California bistro, polished steel glinting in the subtle lighting as plates of game - wild-raised and humanely butchered, of course - found their way in front of the couple in the corner booth. Jaime smiled up at the waiter and thanked him as Will frowned briefly at the interruption in his little symposium, but as Jaime turned back to him, Will was preoccupied with trying to gauge her reaction. His fingers tapped on the table as his pupils flicked back and forth, so Jaime smiled and mouthed a "Thank you" to him as well. After referring to the half-dozen reviews and listings celebrating the restaurant as an icon of sustainable California cuisine three or four times each on the drive up, Jaime had gathered that Will might have been feeling a little nervous about their first anniversary date. A smile managed to bob to the surface past Will's nerves a few times, but she still felt his eyes studying her every reaction as she leaned over the plate and took a good whiff. Rosemary, sage, butter, and the earthy scent of game flooded her nose.

 

“This smells amazing,” Jaime said to Will, her eyes wide.

“Doesn’t it?” Will said, not leaning forward to confirm. “I know it was a bit of a drive, but...I wanted us to do something special, and this seems...pretty special to me.” He smiled at Jaime again, more sure this time, though his fingers kept tapping. “So, uh...go ahead. Take a bite. Tell me what you think.”

Jaime picked up her knife and fork, then looked to Will. “Come on, you too.”

“Oh!” Will said, looking at his cutlery for a moment before picking it up. “Yes, of course,” he added, then looked back to her, waiting for her to make the first cut.

A slice of breast was removed from Jaime’s meal, and she waited for Will to do the same. “On three?” she asked with a nod.

Will nodded, his smile turning more genuine at the spirit of a little competition. He then turned to the plate and quickly sawed off his own slice, re-spearing it on his fork when it tried to slide off. “I’m ready,” he said.

“One, two, three,” Jaime said, and popped the bit of meat into her mouth, giving it a few thoughtful chews before swallowing. Her eyes went wide and she started nodding before she even finished the bite, the juices from the meat carrying just the right amount of game with a big hit of herb. “Oh, wow,” she said. “It tastes even better than it smells.”

 

“Well, a large part of how it tastes comes from how it smells, that’s why everything tastes dull when you have a cold,” Will said between chewing motions, finally swallowing that first bite. “So, as I was saying,” he continued, “it’s very exciting research, but we’re really pushing some boundaries, not just with the science, but also with - I suppose you could call it the morality of it. I mean, every surgeon has to accept that he’s going to do some deliberate harm in order to heal. And we’re looking at going beyond that, at - well, at fixing what most people wouldn’t necessarily consider broken, or even unhealthy. We’re going beyond the normal into regions not yet chartered.” He sighed. “It makes me feel like poor Victor Frankenstein some days.”

Jaime cocked her head a bit. “In...that he was tampering with powers and individuals beyond his understanding or control, or that he was too emotionally immature to deal with the consequences of creating new life?”

“I...was thinking more about the torches and pitchforks outside,” Will said, and Jaime could see him strain to integrate her words into his thoughts. “But I guess it’s the insecurity, too. Do we have the nerve to go through with it, you know, really go for it - as a species - when we figure out something that will change who we are, on a scale we can’t imagine right now? Or are we going to do what we do so well and run screaming back into the night? I mean, when you think about it, it’s not the science that failed Frankenstein, it’s humanity. The people are scared because they don’t understand what he’s been doing. They hate what they don’t understand.”

 

“Well…” Jaime said, and paused for thought. She fiddled with the potatoes on her plate before looking back up at Will and continuing. “In the movie, it wasn’t that they were afraid of Victor Frankenstein’s experiments, it’s that the Monster seemed threatening and vicious, and killed a little girl - but even then, it was because he didn’t understand what she was doing. It was their fear of his appearance and inability to understand the Monster, as well as Victor Frankenstein’s neglect in teaching the Monster about how to live, that lead to his downfall. He created the Monster, and then ignored him.” She took a drink of water, then continued. “And in the book, the villagers never storm the castle. They never get a chance - Frankenstein flees the instant he sees how ugly the Monster is and abandons the Monster. And then pretty much spends the rest of the book running from the consequences of his actions as everyone around him pays the price. His brother and his wife die by the Monster’s hand because he abandons him at his creation, and his fianceé dies after Victor goes back on his word to build the Monster a bride - and for some pretty racist reasons, too. At the end, his own selfishness and inability to deal with the consequences of what he’s done is what leads him to die on that ship. Even then he’s still selfish; he’s more focused on getting his revenge on the Monster for things that Victor himself arguably caused than thinking about the consequences of his actions, demanding the ship’s crew keep going into certain death.”

 

Jaime stopped and took another sip of water. “I mean, I get what you’re saying, Will. But...Victor Frankenstein isn’t the good guy.”

Will sat back in his chair, absorbing everything Jaime had said, until he finally nodded. “I suppose you’re right,” Will said. “That’ll teach me to improvise my talking points. But...I love that we’re having this conversation. I mean, how many people in this restaurant would know all that?” He leaned forward, a smile forming on his lips. “How many people on my team would?” he whispered.

“Well, it’s all there in the text,” Jaime replied as she matched Will’s smile with her own. “Anyone who read the book and saw the movie would see it, I think.” She leaned forward to meet Will and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ll loan you the book, I have it at home.”

Will accepted the peck and broadened his smile for her as Jaime returned to her seat. “I’d like that,” he said. Romantic moment concluded, he looked back at the pheasant on his plate, developing a frown that spread further as he made another cut into the breast. “Jaime,” he said, “would you do me a favor and do a test cut on yours, too? I think this might be undercooked.”

Jaime made a cut down the middle and took a peek. “It looks pink, but this is game, so it’ll be -”

Will turned away from her and scanned the restaurant for the nearest waiter, making sure to raise his right arm in a bid for attention. After a second, a waitress with a tablet of empty glasses saw him and nodded to him, dropping the tablet off at the bar before walking towards him.

“What can I do for you, Sir?” she asked.

“Yes,” Will said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to send these plates back to the kitchen. It’s not cooked properly.”

“Well, Sir,” the waitress said, “we generally cook our pheasant to 150 degrees, which leaves it a little pink. But that’s not a problem at all, I’ll have the chef bring it to a medium.”

“Please do,” Will said. “And you might want to put that on the menu, so people can make an informed choice before they order.”

“Yes, Sir,” the waitress said, bending over to pick up both plates before Jaime stopped her.

“No, no, that’s not necessary,” Jaime said. “Will, you picked this place for a reason, right? They know what they’re doing here. If they say that this should be served like this, then…”

“I’m just concerned, that’s all,” Will said.

“And I love that about you, but you don’t need to worry,” Jaime said. “If they say it’s fine, it’ll be fine. All right?”

“All right,” Will said. “I’ll...we’ll just try it.” He turned back to the waitress. “So, um, that will be all. Thank you.” Jaime just smiled and nodded to the waitress.

 

With the waitress turning away and getting back to taking care of her other guests, Will leaned forward again. “I don’t mean to ruin it for you, it’s just I’ve been reading up on some of the data for farmed game birds and -”

“And what was the meal that...I forget the name of the article you quoted for me on the drive up here, but what were they raving about?” Jaime asked.

“Uh, this,” Will admitted, a bit of a blush sneaking onto his face. “They never mentioned that it was rare, though. I know, it’s my fault, I should have checked more reviews and not let me get blindsided by this.”

Jaime smirked and put her hand on Will’s. “I think you said that it was what all the reviews said was the best meal here, and that we would have to try it.”

Will nodded. “I did say that, didn’t I?” he said. “Well, the first bite was great, I’ll give them that. Let’s just see how it holds up.”

Jaime returned to her fork and knife and smiled one more time for Will. “I think that might be a good idea.”

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s just that I was out of line,” Will said, his eyes on the road ahead, “and I thought I needed to make an apology with more than words, so a slight increase in the gratuity seemed like an appropriate way to communicate that.”

"I suppose so," Jaime replied. "Still, forty percent is...a lot." She chuckled. "If only every rude customer had the same idea as you."

“Do you get a lot of them at Finnegan’s Wake?” Will asked. He took another gentle curve with the Mercedes, already thinking about being back to work tomorrow. Three graft tests maturing over the weekend, the new Anthrocyte revision going through the first motility trials, and dealing with whatever insanity the DoD wanted this week - it all swarmed through his head, almost crowding out her voice. With a sigh, he pushed all that to the back of his mind and forced himself back into the moment. “It always seemed like a...nice place when I was there.”

Jaime put a hand on Will's arm and smiled at him. "I'll have to get you to come by on Friday night, then. It’ll be an experience for you."

Will felt the goosebumps crawl up his arm, thankfully hidden underneath the sleeve of his shirt. Irrational as it was, it felt good to be touched by her, and while that was far from the only reason that he had allowed her into his life, it wasn’t just something he enjoyed when it was there, it was something he actively missed when they didn’t see each other for a few days - days that would have passed Will by without notice, before he had met her. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, we’ll - well, Fridays are usually when I do my best work, after everyone else has gone for their weekend, but - I’ll make the time.” He smiled at her again, then turned back to look at the road. “Maybe not this week right away, I mean, I do have a long-term schedule to consider, but I have a degree of confidence that I can spare an evening sometime soon.”

Jaime looked over to Will. "I meant that as a joke," she said. "Although, it might be amusing to see you squeezed between all of those college students -"

 

Blinding lights behind Jaime’s head. The brief roar of a truck engine. Then force and noise and tumbling, tumbling so fast, screaming.

 

Darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

The semi truck had actually gone on for about a hundred feet, dragging itself from the road over the ditch, and hit the treeline before it could tip over. Inside the cab, the bang of the airbag had just stopped echoing, and with only the flickering lights in the dashboard for illumination, Sara pulled her head free from the slackening plastic. The parts of the steering wheel where she had braced her hands just before impact had buckled under the strain; she looked for the seat belt buckle to no avail and instead reached for the still visible wall mount, grasping it and ripping it loose from the cab’s side wall. The door to her left was up against a tree with most of the weight of the cab leaning against it, while the right side of the cab had gotten the worse end of the frontal impact, with the door on that side mangled beyond hope. Sara cast off the remains of the belt and contorted herself, bringing her foot up to set it against the windscreen. She only had a few inches to work with, but her kick against the spiderwebbed safety glass punched a hole clean through it.

 

No damage reports from the system. Good. Sara reached forward and grabbed the edges of the hole she had made, her hands rolling the jagged edges of the glass back. Now with something to work with, Sara tensed her shoulders and pulled the windscreen apart, ripping a hole through the laminated safety glass big enough for her to squeeze through. The immediate area in front of the cab was a mess of glass and branches and leaking mechanical fluids, so she pulled herself all the way on top of the cab before taking the jump, landing in the gravel of the ditch behind the crashed semi. After a quick scan of the surroundings, she darted into the treeline, her eyes adjusting to the profound dark in a heartbeat. Her left hand reached for her clavicle, where she found the taped-up cell phone cable; she ripped the tape off her chest and smoothly worked the connector into a disguised port behind her ear. Her right hand reached underneath her leather jacket, withdrawing a pistol. Sara was on a schedule, but she needed this done right - quick press check, pull back the slide to make sure there was a round chambered, which of course there was, but she hadn’t survived this long through blind faith in anything, even herself. Still, she allowed herself a smile. Revenge was just a short walk away.

 

Within seconds, she had eyes on the wreck she had caused. The silver sedan was stranded on the shoulder, its right crumpled side still towards the street as it bled hot oil, gas and transmission fluid onto the gravel. She was still fifteen meters away when the driver’s side door opened for the last time in the car’s life and Will came crawling out. Sara shifted her left foot a half-step forward, and the gun came up almost by itself. The front sight hovered dead center over Will’s head, which was shining in false-color shades of white on her infrared vision. It would have been too easy to fire a killshot right then, for her and for him. Sara’s breathing stopped as her stance hardened. But there was something else, someone else - the system dutifully picked out the mangled shape of a passenger hanging out of the destroyed side of the car. Sara involuntarily sucked in a surprised gasp, but managed to hold herself to a whispered, "Oh, shit."

Even at this distance, she could hear Will’s ragged breaths turn to sobs. “Jaime?” he cried, then spit out a wad of blood and sucked in a deeper breath. “Jaime!” he shouted.

There was no answer, but Sara could see the body in the car stir and twitch. It gave her enough pause that the gun lowered from her field of view, while the system highlighted the body and began the arduous task of locating limbs and a face for an ID. “Fuck,” Sara whispered. She already knew who it was she had just killed from the name Anthros was shouting - Jaime Sommers, the bastard's girlfriend. One look at Sommers' broken body, arm bent into multiple angles and torso crushed tore open a deep wound in the pit of her stomach, and for a moment she felt desert heat, not the central California night. "No, stop," she ordered, but the system ignored her. Attempting Facial Reconstruction - 17% - 46% - 65% - 84% - 84% - 84% - Search Terminated (Injuries Masking ID) - Best Match: Jaime Anne Sommers, Female, Age 28 - "Fuck, ID off!" she hissed, “Overlay - ID off!”

The system dutifully obeyed, but when the ID overlay vanished, the broken body of Jaime Sommers was still plain as day. This was supposed to be simple - GPS tracker on the bastard's car, hit it on the passenger side to disable, make him beg for his life, and then end it. She hadn’t gotten within a mile of him all evening, just to make sure there was no way they’d see her, but then again, she hadn’t exactly wondered what would make him abandon his very secure usual routine. Sara had never hated the system quite as much as she did in that moment as it showed her the bruised and broken face of the woman she had just almost killed.

 

Will had crawled back into the car, and in the muted light of the wrecked car's interior, ran his hands over her to assess the damage Sara had caused. "Stay with me!" Will cried, his hands feeling Jaime's compound fractures and broken shoulder. His hands flew to her neck for a pulse, found it, then went fumbling for a flashlight. “Jaime, please! You’ve got to fight! Stay with me!” He climbed through the wreck toward the backseat, spying the dislocated first aid kit resting on the leather.

His pleas, however, were answered only by the car’s dashboard; after a few moments, a pleasant little chime rang out, to be followed by a soothing voice. “Good evening, this is Lucas with 360 Services,” the voice said. “We’ve detected that your vehicle may have been in an accident. Do you need any assistance?”

“Yes!” Will shouted, grabbing for the first aid kit and sliding back towards the front. “Yes, this is Dr. Anthros, there’s been a...there’s been an accident, I need…Jaime! Come on!”

 

Sara had heard enough. The thought of how badly things had gone wrong almost paralyzed her, but there was a simpler, deeper impulse running her now: escape and survive. No time to think about the woman she'd left the way al-Zarqawi's boys had left her: with help for Anthros on the way, every second she spent standing around here would draw the noose around her neck tighter. With a final glance at her gun, she knew that she couldn’t do what she had planned to. She holstered the gun and turned away, sprinting through the brush towards her dump-off car, just a minute and a mile away.

 

Inside the car, Will still labored to get a good look at Jaime’s injuries, shining the light here and there and here again as his mind raced to an inevitable conclusion. He wedged the flashlight into place, then began to unpack the kit and assess his supplies. Sterile wound dressing, adhesive tape, disposable gloves, three foil packs of clotting agent...

“Sir,” the voice said, “do you need assistance? I can call emergency services for you.”

“Yes,” Will said, then went silent for a second or two. “Actually, Lucas, no, that’ll be fine. It’s...it’s fine. Just a, you know, just a little fender bender.”

“Sir, are you sure?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” Will said, pulling on a pair of gloves and fighting to keep his voice even. “Absolutely. But do me a favor and put me through to my workplace contact, okay?”

“...of course, Sir,” the voice said. “If you need anything else, just press the red button. I’ll connect you now.”

 

After a few clicking noises, the call connected again, with another young man on the line. “Operations,” the voice went. “What’s your twenty, Doc?”

“Nathan,” Will sobbed, “there’s been an accident. Jaime’s hurt - she’s [i]dying[/i].”

“Hang in there, Doc, I’m getting the fix on your location,” Nathan said. “Dispatch shows an ambulance last reported cruising through Rohnert Park, I’ll jack the frequency and reroute them, ETA...ten minutes.”

“No,” Will said with a sniffle. “No, she’s not going to make it. I’ve stopped the bleeding as best I can but she’s...she’s not…” He broke down sobbing for a moment, but then hit himself in the head until it stopped. “No! No, William, pull yourself together. Jaime needs you now.” He took a deep breath as Nathan waited on the other end of the line. “Send the retrieval team. Full loadout, and prep augmentation suite one.”

There was a pause on the line, long enough that Will began to fear he’d lost the connection, but then Nathan spoke again. “You got it, Doc,” he said. “Operations to all points, be advised we have a medical emergency involving project personnel. All medical personnel to duty stations. Team One, report status.”

“Ginsburg here, Team One on standby,” another voice said. “What’s the situation?”

“It’s Anthros, he needs a retrieval with full medical,” Nathan said. “Transmitting location.”

“Say again, a retrieval?” Ginsburg asked.

“Confirmed,” Nathan said.

“Copy, prepping for retrieval, we are wheels up in five,” Ginsburg said. “Doctor Anthros, do you need any assistance managing the casualty? I can talk you through this.”

“I’m the doctor here,” Will growled, as his hands went feeling for wounds on Jaime’s chest. “Just get here before she bleeds out, have two bags of Ichor hung and ready by the time you get here.”

“Copy that, Sir,” Ginsburg said.

 

Will grabbed onto Jaime’s blouse and ripped it, then he opened the foil pack and poured the white granules into the largest wound. The dressing followed on top, with his right hand putting pressure on the wound while his left hand spooled off the tape with the help of his teeth. He ran the tape around what he could reach, securing the dressing in place, before ripping off the end and placing it along Jaime’s back. Subclavian and femoral, Will thought, grabbing for the heavy-duty adjustable tourniquet straps from the box. No sense treating the many lacerations on her limbs - he would just have to cut off the circulation at the shoulders and hips. When he tightened the first strap around her right biceps, he thought he heard Jaime moan. One last check that he had pulled the strap tightly enough, and then he spared a few seconds to caress her face. She was pale from blood loss and the right side of her face was shredded from broken glass and broken bone, but she had just enough strength to turn her head towards Will and mouth his name.

 

“Hold on, Jaime,” he whispered to her. “Just hold on.”

 

* * *

 

 

Wolf Creek was almost completely dark when the black helicopter approached for landing, with only infrared strobes to illuminate the helipad for the helo’s night-vision gear. The few acres of clearing in the middle of the woods, ringed by chain link fence, were only noted in US Army records as a weather research installation with a small complement of Army personnel and civilian scientists assigned. When the passenger door on the helicopter slid open, the blackout blue interior lighting cast a ghostly light onto the concrete below, and Will was the first to jump out, ducking under the still-moving rotor blades along with the black-clad members of Team One. Together, they heaved the stretcher with Jaime on it out of the helicopter’s passenger bay. Jaime was strapped down tightly; her mangled limbs had slowly lost color as the tourniquets kept blood from flowing into them, while she had been fitted with a stabilizing collar, intubated and prodded with easily a half dozen needles - sensors and IVs. The two largest needles belonged to two pint-sized plastic bags that Will held over her, filled with the milky white Ichor. Sticking out of her side was a plastic chest tube, draining her chest cavity to keep her internal bleeding from crushing her lungs and heart. Another plastic bag strapped to the side of the stretcher collected the runoff - the first drainage bag had been almost all pink, nearly pure (if thinned) blood; now, only white Ichor ran through the tube, the fluid collecting in the bag free of any blood at all.

 

Together, they rolled the stretcher into the nearby hangar, past several dozen parked cars and into the waiting elevator. Will counted every second as the heavy-duty doors closed behind them and the air around them hissed from the integrated airlock. Finally, the elevator cab started moving, dropping down for about twenty meters before it came to a halt. The doors opened with another hiss, letting them out on the first of Wolf Creek’s two dozen sublevels. A small squad of doctors and nurses surrounded them in seconds, one even taking the IV bags from Will, and for the first time in maybe half an hour, he had a moment to catch his breath, allowing himself to feel the burn of the cuts and bruises on his own face.

 

“Christ, Anthros, look at yourself,” came another voice, and Will groaned. He knew that he’d run into Colonel Bledsoe sooner or later - but he had definitely hoped it would be later. “You look like you went a few rounds with the highway. Get yourself to the lab and have someone check you out.”

“There is no time for that,” Will said, not bothering to stop and address the colonel. “Captain Ginsburg checked me for injuries on the flight over - against my objections - and cleared me, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m a little busy saving Jaime’s life.”

“With my men and my gear,” Bledsoe said. “We’ve been dark for a year, now you’re calling a retrieval op. I need to know what the hell happened out there, Anthros, and you -”

“There’s no other way!” Will snapped back, turning mid-step to shout in Bledsoe’s face. The two men glared at each other before Will turned back around and kept walking with the stretcher. “She is dying, Jonas, and I am the only one that can save her life, so either help or get out of my way.”

Bledsoe pointedly stayed behind Will rather than step into his way. “She’s here now, we can keep her alive,” he said. “But you’re aiming a hell of a lot higher than ‘alive’, Anthros. I’m here to remind you that this path you’re on? It has consequences, for both you and her.”

That managed to get Will to pause. It was only for a moment as the stretcher moved on past them both, but he still took a second to think before he looked Bledsoe in the eyes again. “I know,” he said. “It’s better than the alternative.”

“I hope you’re right,” Bledsoe says. “Get yourself cleaned up at least. I’ve got a few calls to make.”

“No time,” Will replied. “I’ve got to scrub in and lead the procedure.” He turned to run after the stretcher, but looked back to Bledsoe as he hustled to catch up. “Make your calls, Jonas, I’ve already made mine.”

 

Bledsoe watched Will chase after the stretcher, his mind already swimming with a thousand thoughts on how to deal with this situation. In the end, all he could do for the moment was shake his head. “Arrogant bastard,” he muttered to himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Jaime stirred, curling her shoulders in discomfort. She'd always been a light sleeper, and that extended to sleeping on her side. Whenever she went to sleep upset or agitated, she ended up on her back, and if she ended up on her back, she'd be awake in minutes. Jaime tried curling over onto her side, but that just brought a sharp, tugging pain in her arm and side - did Will roll over onto her arm while they slept?

"Hey there," she mumbled as she slowly opened her left eye as her right eye felt sore, "you think you can just hog all the covers -"

It took a few seconds, but when her vision cleared, all she saw was the side of a hospital bed. "Wha -" Jaime forced her other eye open, and then she could see as plain as day - she was in some sort of fancy hospital room. The surprise jump-started the rest of her awake - she wasn't wearing her oversized t-shirt but a hospital gown, her body ached and was sore all over, and - and was that an IV going into her arm?

Jaime snapped bolt upright - and her arms failed to follow her, as she found out that she was strapped to the bed at her wrists and ankles. "He-help!" Jaime shouted. "Somebody! Help!" Her heart pounded in her chest, but no one was outside to hear her. Her eyes snapped back to her arms - God, those are huge IVs, and they're going into both of her arms - and now her head really started to swim as her breathing became ragged, the walls started closing in and she started to sob, "Someone, anyone, help me -"

 

And she was helped. The sob stuck in her throat before it floated back down, just like she felt her muscles relax, guiding her back to rest. Her head quickly emptied of fear and doubt, until there was just one soothing thought calling to her. Everything is under control. Jaime let out the choked sob as a slow breath, then drew a fresh one, deep and true. She was alive, and in a safe place, and whatever was going on, it would work out if she just let things happen.

 

Everything is under control.

 

Jaime took one more breath, then looked around again. Those IVs were still there, but now they didn't seem quite so large, and they were probably there for a reason, no need to worry. One was clear - probably medicine of some kind - but the other was milky and white. The bag was huge, at least a quart, and, well, maybe that IV seemed a little large, but that wasn't a reason to worry either. She looked up at the label - it was upside-down, but after a second it seemed as easy to read as if it was right in front of her. ICHOR - 20% CAPTURED PERFLUORODECALIN BY MASS - CONTRAINDICATIONS… And it continued for another paragraph or two in a very tiny font that she none the less could read perfectly, even though it was upside-down and at the top of the IV pole. That also seemed strange, but it wasn't really worth worrying over.

 

She looked over to her right - maybe there was some kind of signaling device to let someone know she had woken up, or maybe ask politely for a glass of water if it wasn't too much trouble - and saw a rack of computers sitting there. She had never seen computers like that in a hospital room before, but then again, she'd never seen a patient in a hospital with an Internet cable sticking out of their arm, and that's what she saw next. An Internet - Ethernet cable, she heard her little sister Becca say, stuck out of a plug in her shoulder and wound its way across the floor to the computers. She followed it with her eyes the whole length, then turned back to watch the door and wait for someone to come. It had to be there for a reason, no need to worry. She should just wait for someone to come and tell her what is going on. Everything is under control.

 

* * *

 

 

What Jaime didn’t know was that the hospital room she had woken up in was anything but - it was the friendly interior of the armored self-sufficient containment unit euphemistically called “Augmentation Lab 1”, and together with its three siblings, it stood on the concrete disk that terminated Wolf Creek’s lowest sublevel. There was only one way to reach it - the remote-controlled elevator Will was riding down to meet his girlfriend. Of the twenty hours that had passed since the car crash, he’d been up for nineteen and a half, maybe three fourths if you wanted to count the few minutes it had taken him to fall asleep in his lab despite his exhaustion. The elevator shuddered to a stop and the safety cage parted with a groan, setting Will free to run the gauntlet of soldiers and medical personnel that had made camp outside the labs. Will ignored them as best as he could, silently waving away Captain Ginsburg and his men, then took a deep breath and cranked the release lever on the laboratory airlock. Hissing air answered him, but once the pressure was equalized, the actual door swung open smoothly, letting him inside. When he laid eyes on Jaime - strapped down and wired up, but alive - he teared up almost instantly, covering his mouth to catch the sob that tried to escape.

 

Jaime gave Will a small smile. "Hello, Will. What's going on?"

“You’re awake!” Will said, immediately chastising himself for both the lapse of self-control as well as the rather blunt opening. He carefully adjusted the soft smile on his face and walked over to Jaime. “It’s...how do you feel, Jaime?”

"Fine," Jaime replied, her eyes staying with his as he stepped closer. "Are you all right? You look like you got hurt."

“It’s not so bad,” Will said. His hand wanted to reach out and touch her, maybe stroke her cheek, but he thought better of it. “Jaime, what’s...what’s the last thing you remember? Before you woke up?”

"Dinner at the restaurant," Jaime replied straight away. "We both had the pheasant, and we shared a slice of cheesecake. Then we got in your car and left Sebastopol, and then nothing more."

“We were in an accident,” Will said. “It was...it was a bad one. You lost consciousness. I had to bring you here to get treated.”

Jaime nodded. "Good. Thank you, Will."

 

Will grimaced, but even that didn’t seem to move her expression at all. His glance at the screens next to the bed told him what he already knew: the controls were working, and they were working at full tilt.

 

“Jaime,” he began, “are you...are you okay? You know, if there is anything I can do to make you feel better…”

Jaime hadn't moved at all, her stoic un-expression locked in place. "I feel fine, Will. Thank you."

“Okay, then, that’s - that’s all right,” he said. “So, uh, you should lay back and try to rest a little more. I have to go talk to my colleagues now, but I’ll be back soon, and then we can...talk.”

"All right," Jaime said, and laid back down. Her eyes stayed on Will just a few seconds longer. "Come back soon. Please." She smiled, but Will saw he could have sworn her pupils were as big as they could be. He couldn't help but sneak a peek back to the readouts - the controls were still pushing, keeping her panic suppressed. By the time he turned back, though, she had closed her eyes.

 

Will sighed to himself, then slouched toward the door, pushing it open to get out and locking it closed again behind him. The soldiers outside had settled into a somewhat more relaxed formation, keeping their distance, which left center stage to Colonel Bledsoe and his second in command, Ruth Truewell. Will saw Truewell angrily saying something to Bledsoe through the security door, a discussion that Bledsoe forcefully ended as the door slid open.

 

“So?” Bledsoe asked. “Is she stable?”

“The controls are keeping her from panicking,” Will said. “But she’s...completely flattened, almost no natural responses at all. She’s definitely no threat to anyone. We need to turn the controls down and have a grown-up discussion with her about what happened.” He took a breath. “I can’t...I can’t talk to her like this.”

"And I have to re-express my concern about using technology designed to prevent PTSD from combat to suppress and control Miss Sommers," Ruth said as she continued to give Bledsoe a harsh glare. "This is completely out of line, and puts Miss Sommers' recovery at grave risk."

“Concerns noted,” Bledsoe said. “I prefer these kinds of results, though. Besides, the controls will disengage once Miss Sommers calms down by herself, right?”

“Which we don’t know if it would happen at all in this situation,” Will said. “The controls are designed for transient stress spikes, to provide a stable baseline, not to permanently suppress major trauma. Listen, Jonas, we can’t rely on the system fixing her. I need to do this myself.”

"That is, if the controls haven't already made things worse," Ruth interjected.

“There’s no way to change what happened now,” Will said. “The point is, I can bring her to a state where she’ll be lucid enough to process all this while still leaving enough safety margin to prevent accidents. I can make this work.”

“Let’s step back from that for a moment,” Bledsoe said. “The first question we should be asking is where this is heading. I understand your motives, Anthros - for once. You saved her life, and that’s grand. But your girlfriend’s wearing seventy million dollars of our gear. She’s an augment - a viable one, I hope. She’ll be joining us. The question is in which capacity and at what pace. This is something you can take the lead on working out with her, if you want to be the one to bring her the news.”

“Jaime is not a soldier,” Will fumed.

"And she is in no way trained or psychologically prepared for Berkut operations," Ruth said.

“Which isn’t what I asked Santa for,” Bledsoe said, “but Anthros created the facts on the ground, and all we can do is deal with them. I like the idea of a civilian getting looped in even less than you two, so if there’s an alternative to front-line duties, I’ll find it and I’ll go to bat for it. But that’ll be over the objections of the DoD, and I have my work cut out for me just getting them to not shut us down for this stunt. We just spent their money, now we need to show something for it. However that goes, stability is the word of the day. I need her brain in working order, so if you think it’s medically dangerous to keep the controls running at full tempo, by all means go and turn them down. But do not compromise her viability. We are not going to lose her.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Will started, but Bledsoe’s glare cut him off.

“You really don’t want to test me, Anthros,” Bledsoe said. “Truewell, I need her profiled. Find me something to work with so I can sell this to the SecDef.”

"That'll have to wait until the controls are completely off," Truewell said. "They are literally there to blunt any emotional reaction, so unless you want an incorrect profile, they need to come off."

“I’m aware of that,” Bledsoe said. “There’ll be time for a proper assessment later. Right now I need a file on the SecDef’s desk by breakfast that convinces him not to send in the Marines and shut us down. Can you manage that?”

Truewell nodded. "I can work with the surveillance we have on her before, that should suffice for now."

“Good, good,” Will said. “Now, if you’re done selling Jaime, can I proceed?”

“Go ahead,” Bledsoe said. “I’ll be in my office. I expect news in an hour. And good news, I hope.”

“I’ll do my best,” Will said.

 

* * *

 

 

Jaime watched as Will came back in through the doors to her hospital room. Perhaps he had additional information to tell her, or perhaps he was going to tell her what she needed to do next; after all, he was a doctor and she was a patient, so she should do what he said to do. Nothing else to be concerned about.

 

She kept her eyes focused on his, waiting for him to speak as he walked through the door.

“Uh, hello, again,” Will said, smiling at her. It wasn’t a good smile, but that was okay, too. “How are you feeling now, Jaime? Everything still...fine?”

Jaime nodded. “Yes, I am still fine. What do you need me to do?”

“Uh, yes,” Will replied, with the smile getting shaky. “Jaime, I’m going...I’m going to change some things about your...medication, and I need you to tell me how that feels for you, okay?”

Jaime nodded. “I can do that.”

Will nodded back at her. It was nice. He walked around her bed, to the computers at the side of it, then tapped some sort of code into the touchscreen and began to play with the colorful bars showing on the screen. “Okay,” he said, “you should start to feel a difference any second now.”

 

Jaime waited, her eyes fixed straight ahead, for any changes. It was probably very important that she do exactly what Will said; he was a doctor and she was a patient - a patient in a very strange hospital room, she noticed. Jaime had been in a few hospital rooms in her life, and she couldn’t remember them having doors quite that thick. Or an airlock. There weren’t any dressers in her room, either, no furniture really at all except for her bed and the stack of computers next to her. She tried to lean over to look around, but her arm was stopped - wait, why in the hell was she strapped down? It wasn’t anything to worry about - no, of course it was. She tried to speak, but her words seemed heavy and fat in her mouth. “...W-Will, why am I…” she tried to ask, but stopped when her voice sounded flat - probably the drugs Will was adjusting. Jaime shook her head in an attempt to clear her words and sound more upset, but couldn’t muster the right feelings. Why was she so upset? Everything was under control - except for the fact that she was strapped to a hospital bed with IVs in her arms - and she couldn’t remember why. Okay, that was upsetting enough to clear her head of the fog, if only for a moment.

“Will, what am I doing here?” Jaime asked. She felt a spike of fear in her chest, and the two feet between her and Will seemed an intolerable distance with her arms strapped down, unable to hold him - but even still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was fine, everything was under control, and no tears came.

Will sighed and looked around like he wanted to pull up a chair that wasn’t in the room, but also didn’t sit down on the bed or move closer to her. “Do you remember that I told you we were in a car accident, Jaime?” he said.

Jaime had to think for a second to pierce the fog, but then nodded. “Yes, you did, but...this isn’t a normal hospital, Will.”

“No, it isn’t,” Will said. “There’s no nice way to say this - at least that I can think of…” He paused, as if that would give him that inspiration he needed, but finally he just sighed. “Jaime, your injuries were life-threatening. I…” He sighed again and lowered his head, blinking his eyes. Jaime saw him wipe a few tears away, and wondered why she didn’t have to do the same for a moment. “I knew I had to do something, Jaime. I just...I knew. I knew that if I didn’t, you wouldn’t…” With that, he stopped and looked back up at her. “I had to do everything I could to save your life, Jaime. And I did.”

Jaime looked back at herself, laid out on the hospital bed. She tried to kick her legs, and the covers moved - well, as much as her leg restraints would let her. She tried to move her arms; first her left, then her right, which had something strange sticking out of it - “Holy shit - what the hell - Will, there’s a cable sticking out of my shoulder!” Jaime shouted, her panic overwhelming the drugs trying to tell her that everything was fine and under control. She turned back to him, her eyes wild. “What - what is going on?”

Will took a breath. “I had to…” he began, paused, then closed his eyes and took another breath. “I had to...use my research to keep you alive.”

Jaime shook her head. “What?”

“I work on experimental medical technology for the military,” Will said, “and I - I had to implant some of it in you to save your life. That’s why you have, well, have a cable plugged into you. It’s nothing to worry about, Jaime. It’s just part of the...the implant.” He sighed. “I couldn’t tell you about this before, I wanted to, but...but now it’s what’s saved your life.” He smiled and took Jaime’s hand. “Isn’t it amazing?”

Jaime stared at Will, her eyes wide as she tried to process what he had just said, but before she could turn a few stuttered words into sentences, a voice sounded out from a speaker above the door. “Dr. Anthros,” said a male voice. “Please observe the safety and security protocols.”

 

Whatever the safety protocols were, Will stayed with Jaime, holding her tight.

It took a few seconds for Jaime to get herself back under control enough to speak again. “Will...what safety protocols?”

Will sighed. “I’m not...I’m not supposed to be this close to you,” he said. “It’s...it’s a safety thing. Just...forget about that for now. All that matters right now is that you’re alive.” He hugged her again. “How do you feel now?”

“Scared,” Jaime said, her voice cracking. “Confused. The drugs, they...they make me feel numb, and I have to fight to say what I want to say. I don’t know what’s going on, Will, and...and I have a cable sticking out of my shoulder. I don’t understand what you did to me, and that’s scary, too. But...I’m glad I’m alive.” She blinked a few fresh tears out of her eyes. “And I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“That’s good,” Will said, and gave her another squeeze. “And I will explain all of this more later, but first I need to...talk to my boss again.” He sighed. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Is that okay?”

Her panic broke loose one more time before she felt the drugs start to wrestle it back down. “I...I guess so.” Jaime pulled against the straps on her arms and legs one more time. “Could you get rid of these restraints?”

“...yes,” Will said.

“Dr. Anthros, the protocols,” the hidden voice said again.

Will sighed. “I work for...very careful people,” he said. “Listen, Jaime, I trust you, okay? I think you’ll be just fine when I take these off. But…you need to be very careful with how you move right now, okay? Don’t make any quick movements, in fact, it’s best if you don’t move much at all if possible. Don’t try to lift anything, and...be very, very careful when you touch anyone. Okay?”

Jaime gave a quick nod. “Right. Because of...what happened to me. Right?”

“Yes,” Will said. “You’ll...you’ll need to get used to that.”

 

That said, Will scooted back off the bed and took a knee.

“What do you mean, get used to it?” Jaime asked as she craned her head over to see what Will was doing as much as she could.

 

What she couldn’t see - but Will did - was where the straps met the bed frame. It was a heavy-duty institutional model, and as such had proper mounts for the restraints - all of which, Will was sure, were not supposed to be bent outward from their respective tube steel frame by more than a full inch. He looked at the others to check; both legs were bent in much the same way, while the left arm restraint was intact.

 

“Ah, well,” Will said. “There’s just some adjustments that we’ll all have to get used to.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Here's the next chapter, somewhat shorter due to reaching an appropriate break point sooner and also because we kinda ran out of time but didn't want to leave you hanging longer.
> 
> On that note, please note that we made a subtle edit to the previous chapter, removing Will's explanation of the bionics to Jaime in favor of saving it for this chapter. We hope you'll agree that it flows better this way. That said, enjoy!

Her toes seemed fine, Jaime decided as she stared down at her feet in the hospital room’s airlock. She wiggled her toes, and each one moved in perfect rhythm with the others. And yet, they felt very wrong at the same time. She could tell the floor was cold, but she couldn’t really feel the chill. Her weight bore down through her soles and she knew the texture and detail, but couldn’t feel the bones and tendons inside her feet. Those damn drugs were still in her system, so when she looked back up, all she could manage to say was, “I believe there is something wrong with my feet, Will.”

“What is it, Jaime?” Will asked. He was by her side in a flash, grabbing her left hand. “Are you dizzy? Do you need to sit down?”

That damned soothing calm rushed back over her. “No, everything is fine,” she said, then shook her head and tried again. “I mean, maybe.” She squeezed Will’s hand and tried to muster up enough emotion to smile at him. “We’ll find out in a minute. We’re going to get me checked out, right?”

“That’s right, Jaime,” Will said. “There’s just a, uh, short walk so we can do this in a nicer place. You’ll meet some of my coworkers and they’re just going to do a quick check to make sure everything is all right.”

“Okay,” Jaime said, and shook her head one more time. She worked her right hand, trying to get some of the dullness out of it. There was something she wanted to ask him, something important, but the drugs made it hard to want to dare ask a question. “What...where do you work, Will? What is this place?”

“I’ll let my boss explain that,” Will said, smiling a little like he was glad not to provide an answer. “What you need to know is that we...try to save lives.”

Jaime furrowed her brow at Will’s non-answer. “That’s not-” she groaned and rubbed her temple as the cooling wave swept over her again. She tried again, this time clenching her right hand next to her cheek. “That’s not really -” Again, another wave, even deeper this time, followed by another. Her right hand went slack and dropped back to her side. “That doesn’t really matter right now.”

Will frowned at her for some reason. “You’re right,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter right now.”

 

Soon, the airlock door opened, and Jaime’s eyes widened at all the space outside. They were standing at the bottom of a vertical shaft, big enough to contain a small skyscraper, and Jaime caught glimpses of both the modules hanging off a central spire as well as the many stacked subfloors running in rings around the periphery of the shaft. The very bottom was empty, except for them and a soldier - Captain Antoine Ginsburg, US Air Force, Honorable Discharge OCT/2004 - with a gun - Heckler & Koch G36C, 5.56x45mm NATO, 30 round magazine, red dot sight.

Jaime’s eyes went wide as she looked to her right. “Who said that?”

The soldier just looked at her. “Who said what, Ma’am?” he asked.

“Uh, it’s nothing,” Will said, waving the soldier out of the way as they walked past him; he fell in behind them, keeping his distance from Jaime. “What are you hearing, Jaime? Did you hear his name?”

“And...and the name of his gun, I think?” Jaime was about to continue when she let out a deep breath as the coolness came back and her voice flattened back out. “I...I think this is...I mean, it’s all right.”

“Yes,” Will said, and then he chuckled a bit. “It’s a little over the top, don’t you think? I think we should just switch it off.”

“....what is?” Jaime asked, her eyes wandering. “Turn what off?”

“Oh,” Will said. “I mean, I should stop...mumbling stuff.”

“Doc,” the soldier asked from behind Jaime, “are you sure she’s not...upset?”

Will kept walking, barely turning his head to address the soldier. “I’m quite sure, Captain, thank you for your concern.”

 

Will lead the three of them to a large cargo elevator, and that was when Jaime looked up and saw all the free space criss-crossed with walkways and hanging modules stretching above them. She had never been in a building like this, and for the ride up and the walk along one of those routes to their destination, all she could do was look around and take it all in, no question quite making it out of her mouth. There were more soldiers, but also people in suits and labcoats, their names quick whispers in Jaime’s ear with no time to dwell on any one of them. Jaime was still looking around when they finally seemed to reach their destination, with Will pulling the door in front of them open for her. On the other side was a room with a table large enough to seat a dozen people, and two of those seats were taken. There was a woman in a suit with blonde hair - Special Agent Ruth Truewell, CIA, Berkut Liason Officer - and a Chinese man dressed in black with a matching ponytail - Jae Kim. Both stood up when she entered the room, but neither came over to shake her hand as she blinked her eyes, trying to clear some of the cloudiness from her head.

 

“Jaime, I want you to meet my coworkers,” Will said, pointing with his left arm as he began with the unnecessary introductions. “This is Dr. Truewell, our psychologist, and Mr. Kim, our...physical therapist.”

“Miss Sommers,” Kim offered, with a little bow of his head.

“Please, have a seat,” Truewell said, indicating the empty side of the table.

Jaime clenched her hands tight enough to keep the coolness away as she slid into the chair, her legs betraying her. “I...guess so.” She took a few more breaths, her head clearing up as she sat down. “What’s first?”

“Just a quick test of your cognitive functions,” Truewell said. “The way this works is that I’m going to ask you a few questions. Answer them as best as you can. It’s all right if you can’t answer all of them, this is just to see what you might have trouble with. Do you understand?”

Jaime nodded.

“Great,” Truewell said. “First, I’m going to give you an address. In a few minutes I will ask you to repeat that address back to me, so please try to remember it. Are you ready?” She waited for Jaime to nod again. “The address is John Brown, 612 Monterey Boulevard, San Francisco. Do you need me to repeat that?”

Jaime shook her head. “John Brown, 612 Monterey Boulevard, San Francisco. Got it.”

Truewell nodded. “Good. Can you tell me today’s date?”

“Uh…” Jaime thought for a moment. “Is it tomorrow already?”

Truewell smiled as she made a quick note. “Yes, it is now 2 PM on the day after your accident. Can you tell me the date?”

“Monday the 14th, July, 2008,” Jaime replied as she craned her head over towards Truewell. “What are you writing down?”

“Just that you’re having no trouble with the date,” Truewell said, forcing a quick smile. “Actually, the test just requires that you remember the date, not that you account for the passing of time since you lost consciousness, but that’s a very good sign. Very good. Now, this is a little creative.” She grabbed a sketch block with a pen resting on it and slid it across the table toward Jaime. “I want you to draw the face of a clock. Write down all the numbers on it. Can you do that for me, please?”

“Uh, sure,” Jaime said, and quickly sketched a rough clock before sliding the paper back to Truewell.

“Very good,” Truewell said, then checked her watch. “It’s actually coming up on ten past two now. Can you draw the hands of the clock to show that time?” She slid the block back over to Jaime.

Two strokes of the felt-tip pen later, and the clock was complete. “Anything else?” Jaime asked.

“Excellent,” Truewell said, jotting down another note. “Can you tell me about something that’s been on the news lately?”

“Uh...there’s a bunch of wildfires east of San Francisco,” Jaime replied. “They evacuated a bunch of people, but they’re already losing their homes. It’s pretty sad.” She looked to the soldier, who gave her a raised eyebrow, but Truewell’s voice soon drew her back.

“Yes it is,” Truewell said. “We’re almost done. Can you just repeat for me, one more time, the address I asked you to remember at the beginning?”

“John Brown…” Jaime paused in thought for a moment. Will almost seemed ready to whisper the rest of it to her, while Truewell’s pen hovered over her stack of notes. Kim said and did nothing, while the soldier tapped his thumb against the side of his gun. “John Brown, 612 Monterey Boulevard, San Francisco.” Jaime smiled. “There, are we done?”

“Yes, we are done,” Truewell said. “That makes a perfect score. Very good.”

“I told you, she’s fine,” Will said.

“You did say that,” Truewell replied. “Jae?”

 

Kim slowly rose from his chair, then indicated an empty part of the room. “Would you please join me over here, Miss Sommers?”

Jaime stood up and stepped over in front of Kim. “Ready and willing,” she said with a smirk.

“Stand on one leg, please,” Kim said, taking a step back to give Jaime room.

Jaime stood on her right foot, her arms hanging by her side.

Kim took his time circling her, watching for any sign of instability but finding none. “Now lean forward,” he said. “Stretch out your arms and free leg.”

Jaime did as asked, her smirk growing a few millimeters. “You want me to do anything else, you’ll have to give me some ballet classes first.”

That got a chuckle out of Kim. “That’s not too far off from what I do,” he said. “May I touch you?”

Jaime looked over to Will, who gave her a nod. “Sure,” she said.

That was all Kim needed; his hands shot out to feel her back and belly before working their way up her left arm. “Tension is acceptable,” he said. “Above-average muscle tone. Minor spinal issues. The arm needs work.” With his glib dismissal of Jaime’s fitness complete, he stepped back from her again. “Thank you. You may stand now.”

 

He didn’t wait for her to reply; instead he walked to a corner of the room and retrieved both a step ladder and a metal bar with two vertical arms. Jaime watched him set up the ladder, climb it and then hook the bar into fasteners on the ceiling, leaving it hanging about two feet below, just in reach of her arms. With careful steps, he climbed down again, folded the ladder and carried it back to the corner.

 

“Can you perform a pull-up for me?” he asked Jaime.

“Uh, maybe one or two,” Jaime said. She started to work her arms around a few times to warm her shoulders up, but stopped mid-swing as her right shoulder felt off. “Feels weird,” she said, putting a bit more effort into her right shoulder.

“Can you describe the weird?” Kim asked.

“Like...like it’s too smooth,” Jaime replied as she continued to work her shoulder. “I can’t feel the muscles and the joint moving around, it’s just...moving.”

“It does that,” Kim said. He clearly wasn’t here to reassure her. A quick glance at Will showed him giving her another nod, though.

“Is this wrong?” Jaime asked. “I mean, I can’t really feel anything when I bend my knees or take a step either, everything just kind of glides.” She poked at her right arm a couple times. “And it all feels a bit dull or numb, and that definitely can’t be right -” Jaime stopped mid-sentence as another calming wave broke over her, her shoulders slumping as she exhaled a long breath.

“There will be time for that later,” Kim said, while Truewell scribbled something new on her notepad. “Perform the pull-up.”

Jaime blinked a few times, but her face stayed impassive. “Yes, right, I’ll do that,” she replied, stepped up to the bar, and with a hop, grabbed ahold with both hands and performed one quick pull-up before letting go.

“Another one,” Kim ordered. Jaime repeated the performance and let go once again.

“Are you having any trouble with this exercise?” Kim asked her.

“No,” Jaime replied. She shook her head a few more times, and cleared some more of the drug out of her mind. “It’s not too bad. It’s pretty easy, actually, easier than the last time I tried it.”

Kim smiled. “Have you ever done it one-handed?” he asked.

“No,” Jaime replied. “Never even thought about it.”

“Try it,” Kim said. “Start with your left arm.”

Jaime didn’t jump this time; instead, she stood on her toes and grabbed the bar with her left hand. She strained for a few seconds, but couldn’t make more than a few inches of headway before she gave up and dropped back to the floor. “Nope - and ow,” she said.

“I see,” Kim said. “And your right?”

“Don’t really see the point,” Jaime replied.

“It is part of the test,” Kim said. “Do it. In fact...I want to see five repetitions.”

“Uh…” Jaime said, and looked back to Will. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I was just in an accident yesterday, and I had surgery on my right arm, some kind of new therapy tech or something -”

This time, it was Kim’s turn to look to Will and receive a nod, though a reluctant one. Truewell’s pen picked up more speed as she added a flurry of notes to her pad. “It will be fine,” Kim said. “Just do it.”

Jaime shrugged. “Okay, whatever you say.” She got back on her tiptoes and grabbed the bar with her other hand - and with almost no effort lifted herself until her chin went over the bar. “Holy shit!” she exclaimed, failing to notice that she was holding herself up above the bar with complete ease.

Kim smiled at that. “It is working,” he said.

Jaime lowered herself back down, and then cranked out the four remaining pull-ups in rapid succession, and then kept going. Another set of five was completed just as quickly as the first, and when she finally let go, her mouth hung wide open in disbelief. “What...what did you all do to me?” she asked. “I mean, I don’t even feel tired or sore, and I just pulled myself up one-handed ten times like it was nothing.”

 

The silence that met this question lasted for a good two seconds, but then the door opened and another man - Colonel Jonas Bledsoe, US Army - walked in. He was balding, wearing a suit without a tie, and his sheer presence seemed to drop the temperature in the room by ten degrees.

 

“Everybody but Ginsburg and Sommers leave,” he ordered. “Now.”

“Jonas -” Will piped up.

“You heard me,” Bledsoe replied. “Leave us alone, now. Captain, in the back.”

“Sir!” the soldier called out, and made his way to the back of the room as ordered - as far away from Jaime as he could get without leaving the room, essentially.

Jaime got to share one last look with Will when he and his coworkers walked out, and it wasn’t a happy one. “Will?” she asked, her heart pounding in her chest. “What’s going on -” Will opened his mouth to reply, but didn’t get a chance before Jaime’s eyes glassed over once again as a tsunami of calm crushed her sudden terror flat.

 

He didn’t even look back that one last time before he shut the door from the outside, and then that left Jaime alone with two soldiers and no idea what was going to happen. Bledsoe looked her over and tried to smile at her.

 

“Relax,” he began. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Miss Sommers. But I think it’s time the two of us had a talk. I’m the man in charge of this place. You can call me Mr. Bledsoe.” He waved his hand toward the table. “Let’s sit down.”

Jaime looked at him for a bit, trying to figure out what to think as she struggled to stay above the cooling calm. She had been...changed, made stronger, she was seeing things and Will had done it to her, and now there was this new man, Bledsoe. Jaime’s eyes rolled back and she took a deep breath, but instead of demanding to know what was going on, to see Will, to see Becca, to simply get out of this place, all she felt capable of doing was sitting down in her chair again. “Okay,” she finally said, then walked back to the table to sit down.

 

Bledsoe followed and took a seat opposite her, then leaned forward and put his elbows on the table as he folded his hands.

“First off, I’m glad you’re okay,” he said. “We all are. When you came in here, you were in a very critical condition. How Dr. Anthros worked to save your life was...nothing short of a miracle.” He sighed. “However. Even miracles come with a price. What did he tell you?”

“He…” Jaime paused to shake her head. “He hadn’t said much. I…what have you done to me?”

“A fair question,” Bledsoe said. “When you came in, you had dozens of broken bones. Your legs had been crushed in the accident. The right side of your head was bashed in. Finally, you were bleeding out, fast.” Bledsoe shook his head. “I’ve lost good friends to less than that, Miss Sommers. You were lucky we had a medical unit on the scene so quickly. Once you came in, our medical staff evaluated your condition. They quickly realized that there was no way to stop the bleeding from your limbs, nevermind any hope of saving them. Dr. Anthros made the call. We had to amputate.”

“Am...amputate?” Jaime asked. Her shoulders slumped and her head drooped, but she fought back upright. “But I have...everything?” She looked at her arms. “And I have my legs.”

Bledsoe nodded. “You do,” he said. “Except these are brand new.” He paused for a moment. “How much has Dr. Anthros told you about his work here? I imagine he’s had to dance around it a lot, considering that most of it is top secret. But he’s mentioned that he’s working on breakthrough medical technology, right?”

Jaime nodded.

“We’ve made great strides in prosthetics over the last few years,” Bledsoe said. “People who have lost their legs in accidents can take their first steps again. Soldiers who lost an arm in combat can now get artificial replacements that let them button their own shirts. I’m sure you’ve seen that on the news.” His expression darkened. “But that’s child’s play compared to what we’re researching here. I don’t settle for first steps. We’ve created a suite of parts and implants that can completely replace a natural body part, do everything it does and look completely natural at that. More than that, even. They’re better than the original parts. Stronger, tougher, more flexible.” He locked eyes with hers. “We call them bionics.”

“And…” Jaime looked back at her hands. “You did that to me?”

“Yes,” Bledsoe said. “It was either that or let you die.”

“So…” Jaime’s eyes started to tear up. “What...what did you have to take?”

 

Bledsoe reached across the table; Jaime found her hand sitting still as he touched it.

 

“Your legs,” he began. “Your right arm, eye and ear, too.”

“And…” Jaime stopped and sniffled. “And there’s no way to get them back?”

“No,” Bledsoe said, shaking his head a bit. “I’m sorry, Miss Sommers. We did what we could, but in the end we just didn’t have a choice.”

“So,” Jaime started. She wiped her eyes, then continued. “So, when can I go home? What happens now?”

“As soon as possible,” Bledsoe said. “First, we need to talk about a few things. There’s a reason our research is classified. You’ve noticed how easy it was to pull yourself up with your new arm, how strong it is.” He paused for a moment. “Imagine what happens when you can punch someone with that kind of strength. Imagine what the people who would want that kind of power would do with it - and how far they would go to get it. We have to make sure that nothing bad happens with this technology. We need you to keep this secret with us. Nobody can know this exists. Nobody can know what happened to you here. Do you understand that?”

Jaime nods. “I understand. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“Good,” Bledsoe said. “That brings us to the most important part of our little chat. I’m sure you’ve already figured out that we work for the Department of Defense. As it stands, you’re wearing about seventy million dollars worth of their cutting-edge hardware. And that’s before we consider operational support and maintenance.” He frowned. “Much as I’d like to just help people like you, I don’t get to run a charity here. But there’s a simple solution that will helps us both. Work for me.”

Jaime felt the drugs pulling her down again, weakening her resolve. “I...I don’t…I can’t…I want to help, but…”

“Speak your mind, Miss Sommers,” Bledsoe said. “I’m listening.”

“I...can’t,” Jaime finally spit out. “I’m just a...a bartender, a librarian, I’m not a soldier.” She took a few deep breaths, and finally managed to look back at Bledsoe’s eyes. “I’m not a killer.”

“That’s not who I’m asking you to be, Miss Sommers,” Bledsoe said. “I have plenty of shooters and doorkickers. What I need is someone who can solve problems with more than brute force. Someone who’s quick-thinking and adaptable. Someone who understands what it means to protect people who can’t protect themselves.” He paused. “And I think you can be that someone. Let’s not kid ourselves, Miss Sommers. You do a good job as a bartender, sure, but that’s not exactly the limit of your ambition, is it? It’s just something you do that pays the bills. But you can do more than that. Be more than that. I’m offering you that chance. I know you’re not a soldier or a trained operative, but hell, if training is all that it takes, that’s the least of my problems.”

“I want to be a teacher,” Jaime said. “I don’t want to be a soldier. Or a spy. Or whatever it is you want.” She braced herself on the table with her arms, trying to stay upright. “I will do what I can to repay you...but I can’t...I won’t do that.”

At this, Bledsoe’s expression hardened, and the semblance of warmth in his voice drained quickly. “Neither of us are in a position to choose ‘no’, Miss Sommers,” Bledsoe said. “There’s a world out there trying its darndest to break itself every day, and every day we go out there and try to keep it in one piece. You’re the only one who has bionics. That gives you capabilities above and beyond anyone else I could recruit. There are problems out there only you can solve, fights only you can win. If I have to pick between making you do this or benching you and letting innocent people die, you can be damn sure I’ll send you out there, whether you like it or not.” He took a breath. “There is one choice you have right now, Miss Sommers. You can do this on your terms, or on mine. But when I said ‘work for me’ - that was not a choice. That was a fact.”

“N-no!” Jaime said. “I won’t - you can’t…” Her eyes rolled back into her head for a moment, as the drugs came on strong enough that she nearly hit her head on the table.

“Yes, I can,” Bledsoe said, and his voice softened just a bit. “I don’t like it, but doing things I don’t like is pretty much my job description. That’s what it takes to keep America safe, Miss Sommers. Do you think the bad guys aren’t as smart as we are? Or as determined? We don’t live in a very nice world. That there are still a lot of people who think we do is the only credit I can take for my work.” He shook his head. “We’ve given you a second chance, Miss Sommers. Another life. If you won’t take that chance, then all that’s left for me to do is to take back all that hardware we put in you and let nature take its course. Am I making myself clear?”

Jaime could barely keep her head off the table, let alone look Bledsoe in the eyes. “What will...happen?”

“You’ll die,” Bledsoe said.

“Oh,” Jaime said. The drugs relented enough for her to sit up somewhat straight. “What...what do you want me to do?”

“For the moment, our priority is covering up the accident,” Bledsoe said. “We’ll give you a final checkup, you get dressed and go back home to reassure your sister that everything is fine. After that, we’ll establish your cover job. A little surprise windfall for you and Rebecca. When you’re not needed for an operation, you’ll be here to train. When you are needed, we’ll brief you on the specifics. We’ll be providing you with cover stories, alibis, documentation, whatever you need to maintain the cover. Clear so far?”

Jaime nodded. This time, it was defeat, not the drugs that kept her eyes low.

“We can formalize the rest later,” Bledsoe said. “For now, the important part is that you understand what I need from you and that you’re on board.” Then, he smiled softly like he hadn’t just threatened to kill her. “I think we both deserve a break now. Coffee?”

Jaime shrugged, and laid her head down on the table in her arms.

Bledsoe watched her, just a bit of concern breaking through his expression. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, then got up from his chair.

 

Leaving the room behind, Bledsoe stepped outside into the hallway. On top of the security team, Will and Truewell were already waiting for him.

Truewell’s arms were crossed as she stared past Bledsoe into the room. “Sir, you are aware that Miss Sommers needs to be on suicide watch immediately, I hope.”

“Naturally,” Bledsoe replied. “We have the SOP for a reason, Truewell. Take it from here.”

“Right away, Sir,” Truewell replied, and walked past him into the testing room.

“It’s just grand to hear how much you care about Jaime, Jones,” Will threw in. “She’s almost zonked out by the controls and you still manage to scare her half to death.”

“We don’t have the time for softballs,” Bledsoe said. “And your right to object to this ended the second you called for a retrieval, Anthros.”

“I wanted to save her life!” Will shot back. “Not...conscript her into this madness.”

“This is no longer about what you wanted to do,” Bledsoe replied. “Believe me, I would have preferred a different candidate - a soldier who’s grateful for a second chance to serve his country, for example. I told you there’d be consequences, I warned you this would happen, and here we are. So you don’t get to go over my head and then play the victim card, Anthros. Pull yourself together, do your damn job and get me a report on the bionics. It’s time you start thinking with your head again.”

“Oh, are we allowed to think now?” Will said. “I couldn’t tell. After all, Jaime’s so doped up she barely knows what she’s saying.”

“I seem to recall that being your parameters on the controls, Anthros,” Bledsoe said. “And that’s something else to fix - the baseline is too high, any stress at all and she went limp. It was like talking to a heroin user. Maybe that’s what you should focus on for the moment, adjust the baseline lower so she can look normal in public, and moderate the full effects so she can remain combat effective unless she’s about to become hysterical. I need you to make sure that she can stay on task, but won’t try to kill us. In every other regard, I’ll settle for ‘reasonable’. Do you think you can manage that?”

Will’s eyes narrowed to a glare, but he held his tongue for that critical moment. “Yes, Sir,” he said.

 

Bledsoe turned away to the sound of Will’s silence, but only made it a few steps down the hall before that broke. “You know she can’t be what you want her to be,” Will said quietly.

“For her sake,” Bledsoe replied, “I hope she can.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that wraps up Chapter Two. As before, here’s some things explained that may not be obvious from the story itself.
> 
> While we’re generally sticking to the depiction of the Wolf Creek facility from the TV series, we’ve also expanded the facility somewhat. Since our version of Berkut is government-funded and has access to more resources, you’ll be seeing more of this underground facility here, along with all the support infrastructure you would logically need to both develop bionic technology and stage operations from there. We felt that the TV version couldn’t really decide exactly how much pull and resources Berkut has, which is something we’re looking to delve into a little. For the moment, just enjoy the sights.
> 
> Antoine Ginsburg is one of the original characters we’re adding to the story to put a more human face on the Berkut operatives who will be Jaime’s backup in the field. Despite the similar name and job description, he is not replacing Antonio Pope, who fills a different place in the story as Bledsoe’s trusted lieutenant / problem solver. While you’ll be seeing more of Team One and its members in general, Antoine will remain in focus a bit more often and serve as one of Jaime’s eventual teachers within Berkut. We’ll let him explain why he was honorably discharged from the Air Force at his own pace, though.
> 
> While one of the goals in this rewrite is to cut down a bit on the at-times flagrant gun porn in the original version, we couldn’t help but keep some of those aspects to show how the system put into Jaime works. The H&K G36C is an automatic carbine much like the Colt M4, which would be a more common choice for a US military unit, but this emphasizes that Berkut’s a little off to the side of the traditional force structure and chooses its own standard-issue weaponry through less official channels. Also, the G36C has a neat “space gun” look, but it isn’t exactly the new hotness on the market anymore, again coming back to the “This is how it was done in 2008” thing - implying a procurement sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. For the record, if we were setting the story in 2014, we would probably pick the FN SCAR or H&K 416 instead, both of which were technically on the market back in 2008 but not widely adopted. But this way, by deliberately going back a generation, we’re allowing for the fact that Berkut probably didn’t rush to buy the newest and fanciest rifles right before recruiting Jaime. A minor detail, that.
> 
> The things the system says are audible to Jaime only due to her bionic ear. As you can see, it not only can identify firearms, but also has access to Berkut personnel files. Pay attention to what the system calls people versus how they are introduced to Jaime. You may just catch a few glimpses of the secrets being kept from her for now.
> 
> The little test Ruth Truewell conducts with Jaime is adapted from a real clinical assessment tool for cognitive function. It may all sound a little weird and Jaime certainly finds it patronizing, but it’s designed to quickly assess the functionality of the patient’s memory (short- and long-term) as well as more advanced skills - at least that’s what it said. Neither of us has much of a professional background in cognitive science, but it looked good to us! In contrast, Kim’s physical assessment is basically pulled out of thin air, but much more specific to Jaime’s injuries and the implants anyway.
> 
> We originally had a more technical and complete explanation of Jaime’s injuries and what was done to treat them, but it ended up on the cutting room floor because a) it was out of character for Bledsoe to go into so much detail and b) it simply dragged on too long. But rest assured that if you’ve watched the show and thought “Jaime could never do X without Y”, we’ve thought about X and Y. There’s a lot more going on under the hood than just the limb replacements, a new eyeball and a fancy cochlear implant.
> 
> We resisted the urge to include “Be all you can be” in Bledsoe’s recruiting pitch. It was hard, but we did it. Because we care about you guys.
> 
> SOP = Standard Operating Procedure. Not too obscure as far as military slang goes, we figured we’d start slow and work our way up from there.
> 
> The short discussion about adjusting Jaime’s controls after this was added pretty much in the last editing pass because we wanted to make it clear that this is not how Jaime will act going forward. It’s just that right now, she’s being evaluated by a group of people who are very aware of how dangerous she could be, hence the additional security and attempts to keep her under control. But rest assured, we’re dark, not grimdark. The deck might be stacked against her, but she’s still our heroine and you’ll see her take charge of her destiny.
> 
> That’s all we have for now, but be sure to let us know if you have more questions or concerns in the comments!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo, sports fans! Thanks for keeping the faith in us. Who knew that writing a book / joining the Army would take away so much free time? In any event, we’re not gone, and to prove it, here’s Chapter Three of the rewrite. Enjoy! (Also note that we added the end notes to the text proper this time, as they've gotten too long for the 5000 characters normally allotted here on AO3.)

The augmentation lab modules were built with some very specific mandates in mind: autonomous supply of power and closed-circuit air recycling, high resistance to fires inside and outside, as well as a considerable resistance against physical impacts. All of that added up to an unwieldy package just small enough to still be liftable by crane, but more relevantly, it meant that the actual interior space was only as big as it had to be to house an augment for treatment and observation - not a lot of space, then, and even that had now dwindled thanks to a rolling clothesrack parked beside the bed, with Ruth Truewell quite busy sifting through the mass in search of clothes in Jaime’s size. That left Will to fade into the background, sitting at the table with his laptop in front of him typing furiously, while Jaime stood with her legs leaned against the end of the bed, arms folded and eyes staring a little downward.

 

“I think this shirt is good,” Truewell said, pulling out a hanger - the shirt on it looked wispy, a faded blue color with similarly faded white printed lettering in the front and a wide neck, as if to further lighten the already almost insubstantial item. “It’s cut a bit wider in the chest.” She slipped the shirt off the hanger and put the hanger back on the rack, then turned around to face the bed, holding out the shirt for Jaime to take. “Could you look at it and tell me if that’s okay for you?”

Jaime didn’t look up. “Does it really matter what I think?” she asked, and the other noises stopped in an instant. “Is anybody going to tell me what just happened up there?” Truewell and Will’s attention snapped to Jaime, but neither one made a move. “Your boss dumped a mountain of crazy on me, told me you all did **something** to me, and then said I...I’m going to be a **killer** for him - and I just nodded to everything. I didn’t go to med school, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what a concussion does - and car crashes don’t give you superpowers. Now can somebody explain that, or are we just not going to talk?”  
Truewell looked over to Will, who tried very hard to turn his attention back to the laptop screen. “I think Dr. Anthros can explain the medical aspects best,” she said.  
Will looked up, first at Truewell, then at Jaime - lingered on the way the anger in her eyes changed to sadness and back again - then down at the desk. “Yes, it’s…” he began. “Bionics. My life’s work. Artificial body parts that aren’t just replacements, but improvements. You know how I always talk about improving things for everyone, well…” He flourished with his right hand at her, as if the words ‘That’s it’ were too difficult.

Jaime just stared at Will. “And? I swear, Will...” She balled her hands up into fists for a moment, causing Truewell to take a cautious step back. “Just explain **any** of this to me. Any part of it at all, a straight answer from **somebody** is all I want.”

Will pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk about your right arm, just to start somewhere. It has artificial, well, everything. The bones are made from a custom carbon allotrope with some titanium alloy reinforcements in the hand. The muscles are bundles of electroactive polymers - they contract just like biological muscles when you apply some voltage. The power system is an array of ultracapacitators, recharged via high-efficiency fuel cells from your blood sugar. It has all the dexterity and mobility of a baseline human arm, but it’s much more resilient and can generate a tremendous amount of force.” He looked at her, and this time actually kept eye contact. “I promise, Jaime, it won’t inconvenience you in any way. You can do everything with it you could do before...just even better.”

“Like kill people,” Jaime spat. “That…” She shook her head. “What about **that**? Who the hell **is** that guy, and...what...what the **hell** happened in there to me? And don’t you fucking **dare** say it was the drugs, because we both know that isn’t true.”

“Jaime,” Will said, “the bionics are still experimental, and there are certain safeguards -”  
“ _Safeguards?_ ” Jaime echoed. “Are you telling me that there’s some kind of computer you stuck in my...my **head** that was trying to make me calm down? That **you** made me agree to be some kind of _government killer_?” She clenched her hands and turned away for a moment. “ **What** kind of **fucked up** people do you work for - who the **fuck** do you **think** you are that that is even **acceptable**?”

Will looked down at his lap and let his shoulders sink. “I’m sorry, Jaime,” he said. “It wasn’t...it wasn’t supposed to be like this, it was...I never wanted to do this to you...I was trying to save your life, and if it had come down to it I wanted to give you a choice, a real choice, but -”

Jaime clenched her hands even tighter, her arms shaking with rage as they brought her fists to her forehead. “But instead you thought it was okay to put something **inside** me that - that makes me accept whatever **bullshit** you or your boss tell me?”

“No!” Will replied. “But - err - I...Jaime, just...please, calm down, we can **talk** about this -”

“ _ **Aargh!**_ ” Jaime screamed, and kicked at the leg of the bed at her feet - snapping the steel tube clean off and sending it screaming across the floor as the bed collapsed with a bang. Jaime either didn’t care or didn’t notice as she rounded back on Will and Truewell, stomping in their direction. “What on **Earth** is there to fucking _**talk about?**_ ”

 

Will’s every instinct screamed at him to flinch away, and the corner of his eyes caught Truewell doing just that, but he still had enough focus to keep his feet where they were and just duck down to get his hands back on the laptop’s keyboard. With a few swift keystrokes, he started the upload of his new settings to Jaime’s system, and when he looked over his screen at her, it was just in time for him to see Jaime’s eyes dull. He took a few deep breaths - noticing for the first time in a while just how hard he was breathing, then looked over to Truewell, who fixed him with her wide-open eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. His stuttering breath almost betrayed him, but he couldn’t stop his shoulders from slumping in time with Jaime’s. “I’m...I’m so sorry.”  
“What did you do?” Truewell asked.  
“She...she was about to do **something**!” Will said to Truewell. “You saw her move! You saw it, just like me! No, we aren’t safe, not like this, not like...no. That’s it. Back to basics until I’m done with the configuration.” He turned his head back to look at Jaime. “Everything’s just fine, Jaime, right? Let Miss Truewell help you pick some clothes. You’re going home and you want to look good for that, don’t you?”

Jaime nodded, her eyes fixed on a point halfway between her and the wall. “Yes.”

Truewell’s brow furrowed, and she stepped in front of Jaime. “Jaime, I’m going to see if you’re all right. Can I touch you?”

Jaime nodded in the same slow fashion. “Yes.”

Truewell waved her hand in front of Jaime’s eyes, but failed to elicit a response beyond a simple blink. She picked up Jaime’s hands; both arms hung limply as Truewell moved them back and forth. Truewell took a deep breath, then simply poked Jaime in her bionic right eye - and she didn’t so much as blink. “Jaime...how do you feel?” Truewell asked.

Jaime gave the slightest shrug. “Don’t know.”

Truewell turned back to Will, horrified. “What did you _do_ to her?”

“I stopped her from hurting,” Will said, not meeting Truewell’s look - instead, he went back to his screen and started typing again. “And now I’m busy fixing it, so **please** get on with the clothes - this is already taking too long.”

“You - _how_ -” Truewell sputtered.

Will’s left hand shot away from the keyboard and toward the table’s surface, banging it with the flat of his hand hard enough to tip over the empty plastic cup on the other side of it. “I **killed** her!” he spat. “Is that enough of a reasonable scientific explanation for you, Doctor Truewell?” He didn’t feel the pain in his hand, just brought it to his face, buried his head for a moment before he ran his hands through his hair. “I just turned her **off** , like a lightswitch, because that’s what **I** made her into! And right **now** I’m really busy trying to get her back, trying to...trying to make her into who she **really** is, without killing her for good - or everyone in this room.” His hands crept back towards the keyboard, but didn’t move further than that, and finally he took a deep breath, but when he turned to look at her, all he had for her was an angry glare. “Now would you...would you be so kind as to leave me to my **work** instead of demanding I justify myself? Could you do that? That would be **super**.”

Truewell stared at Will for a moment after his tirade, then nodded. “I can do that.” She reached around behind Jaime’s back to undo the knot in her hospital gown, sliding it off of Jaime’s shoulders before she looked back to Will. “Be careful. For her sake.”

Will’s eyes glistened with a wet sheen, but two words escaped his clenched teeth. “Of course.”

 

Truewell took Jaime’s hand and gently pulled up on it, leading Jaime to stand up with her, and Truewell continued her attempts to get Jaime dressed from there. There was no bra in Jaime’s exact size, but Truewell selected one she thought would be bearable for a few hours, at least. The shirt, thank God, was a decent enough fit, though the neck opening almost rode down to Jaime’s shoulders and the bottom almost but not quite reached her waist. The real problem were the pants, all of them both too baggy and too short for Jaime’s more slender build. Truewell allowed herself a short, frustrated sigh, then went back to the rack, trying to conjure another pair she might have missed in her first browse. As she stepped away, Will looked up from his screen, took in the sight of Jaime staring blankly forward, and finally rose up himself. Slowly, he walked up to her, looked at her, as if trying to find the woman he loved somewhere inside the machine he had put together. Carefully, he reached for her right hand and grasped it in his own.

 

“I’m sorry, Jaime,” Will whispered to her. “I’m...I will fix this. You’ll be all right. I **promise**.” He leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek, but flinched back when she turned her head to face him. She said nothing, just looked at him, and it wasn’t long before Will had to turn away from her and take another deep breath. “I can do this,” he muttered to himself. “I can fix this.”

 

Will looked to Truewell, who was pointedly not trying to interfere, and with a sigh he walked back to the table, sat down and got back to work. Truewell stepped back in, carefully guiding Jaime through the process of dressing herself. Three minutes later, he hadn’t fixed it, but his tired eyes were staring at something he told himself would have to do for now; a shadow of Jaime, nicely trimmed to the size of the box Bledsoe wanted to put her in, and hopefully good enough to fool the people around her for the moment. It would buy him enough time to create something better, something **perfect** -

 

Will’s finger hovered over the “Enter” key for the next few seconds. Finally, he built up the motivation to do it, or just lost the strength to fight the compromise any longer, and so he went ahead and pressed down on it. A moment later, Jaime took a sharp breath and turned to face Will, while Truewell backed away, out of her way.

 

“Jaime?” Will said, his voice quivering a little. “Are you okay?”

“Better than you, it seems like,” Jaime said, smiling a little. “You look really tired, Will. Have you gotten any sleep?”

“No,” Will said. “No, I haven’t, I’ve been...busy.”

"I'd say so," Jaime said, "what with all the surgeries you had to do to implant my bionics. And dealing with Mr. Bledsoe certainly seems like a handful - he's _such_ a grouch." Her smile stayed precisely where it was as she spoke. "But you really should get some rest, Will. We both know how you can get when you haven't slept."

“Yes, um,” Will said. “I just needed to make sure everything is all right first.” He looked at the laptop. “Everything seems to check out. Are you ready to go home?”

"Ready!" Jaime chirped. "Arm, legs, eye and ear seem to work all right, and you seem to think the rest of my bionics work all right. I got briefed - if you can call it that - by Mr. Bledsoe on what I'm going to be doing now working for him, and I should probably go home and sleep so I can start training tomorrow." The corners of Jaime's smile wiggled slightly. "You know, so I can learn to kill people."

Will tried to turn his cough into a laugh, and turning the corners of his mouth into a smile wasn’t that much of a success either. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, you know, Jaime, Jonas is a little intense about this...this military stuff. I mean, there’s so much more to...uh, I mean, it’s not all killing. Or even fighting! Some of this stuff is really, you know, like...first aid?” He looked to Truewell, who looked back at him with worry bleeding onto her face.

“What did you do to her now?” Truewell asked.

“It’s a stopgap,” Will admitted. “I mean, it’s...it’s her, just...stable.” He turned to Jaime. “Right? I mean, you still feel all right, Jaime, yes? I mean, we didn’t mean to upset you or...or…” He trailed off, waiting for her to jump in, but it was only after a second of silence that she spoke, having clearly waited her turn.

"I _was_ upset, sure, but, well, now I feel fine," Jaime said. "I wasn't **that** upset, really, and what Mr. Bledsoe said makes a lot of sense. You've put so much money into me - literally - and it would be wrong to let the hardware go to waste, after all, so I guess I work for him now on all this spy and soldier stuff." Jaime shrugged, her smile still on. "It'll be an adjustment, sure, but if Mr. Bledsoe thinks it's the right thing to do, then it's the right thing to do."

“Right,” Will said, trying to come up with something smarter to say next. “So...I guess you know now why I brought up Frankenstein at the dinner. But, uh, I definitely listened to what you had to say. I won’t make **his** mistake. I’ll be there for you, Jaime. That is what you were talking about, yes?”

"Yes, and I'm glad you're here," Jaime said, her smile growing a bit. "And I'm going to need your help if I'm going to train as hard as I need to so I can get these missions done, right? I mean, I'm the one doing the fighting, but you'll need to keep me in fighting shape and show me how all this works if I'm gonna be the best soldier I can be." Having smiled enough at Will, she turned to look at Truewell and thank her for all the help, when her eyes picked out something on the clothes rack behind her. “Ooh, that’s a nice leather jacket,” she said. “Can I see that?”

Truewell turned around to look at where Jaime was pointing, and did a double-take when she saw which jacket she was pointing at. “Of...course,” she said, turning to fetch the jacket from its hanger. Her hands lingered on it for a moment before she handed it off to Jaime, who quickly fed her right hand into the matching sleeve and easily shrugged the jacket onto her shoulders.

“It’s kinda big in the shoulders,” she said, shaking the sleeves. “And in the arms.” Jaime zipped it up, and turned that one-thousand watt smile back on Will. “But I like it! Guess I’ll be working out a lot! What do you think, Will? Badass, right?”  
Will looked at her. “It...looks good,” he said.

Jaime’s smile faded a bit. “What’s wrong, Will?” She pulled on the jacket to get a better look at it. “Does it have a tear or a stain on it?”

“No,” Will said. “It’s just...it’s a bit of a new look for you.”

Jaime put her hands on her hips and thrust her shoulders back, trying to look as big as possible. “Well, if I’m going to be a secret bionic assassin, I should look the part, right?”

“I think,” Will said, almost managing a smile, “I think the ‘secret’ implies not looking the part.” He looked to Truewell for confirmation.

“Yes, I’d agree with that,” Ruth added. She gave Jaime a smile, but the unconscious rubbing of her arms said otherwise.

Will quickly added “But it does look good and if you want it, by all means.”

“Badass jacket it is!” Jaime said. “So, are we all done now?”  
“It looks like we are,” Truewell said.

 

Will took one more look at Jaime smiling at him and glanced down at the laptop, the machine he had used to make Jaime...not Jaime. He allowed himself a final sigh, then folded the laptop shut and picked it off table.

 

“Then let’s go,” he said. “If we hurry, we can make it in time to pick up Rebecca from school.”

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, Will was wrong about that; even with the black Berkut-issue SUV brazenly ignoring speed limits all the way into San Francisco and beyond, there was no Rebecca Louise Sommers waiting for Jaime at her high school. To hear a classmate of hers tell it, she had “bummed a ride with Kate”, and so the SUV was off again to their apartment. Sure enough, the dull grey Chevy Malibu parked in front of their complex confirmed the story; Will pulled the large SUV into a spot behind the sedan and turned off the engine.

 

“So,” he said. “I imagine you want to wait outside, Dr. Truewell?”

“I’d prefer to stay with her,” Truewell said, and turned her eyes to Jaime. The light smile on her face seemed to be permanently fixed, and she wasn’t looking around to take in anything, just staring ahead until she noticed Truewell looking at her - then her head turned, as if on a swivel, and her smile brightened on cue.

“That’s rude,” Jaime said to Will before meeting Truewell’s eyes. “You shouldn’t have to wait in the car, Agent - excuse me, _Doctor_ Truewell.” She gave her a big wink at that. “Of course you can come in.”

“We don’t have a good story for her,” Will said, Jaime’s attention tracking back his way. “She has to stay in the car.”

Jaime turned back to Truewell. “Sorry, you can’t come in. You have to stay in the car and wait. Okay?”

Truewell forced a smile. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll go ahead and move the truck out of sight, too. If you need me, just call me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Will said. “Come on, Jaime. Let’s go inside.”

“Sure thing!” Jaime chirped as she hopped out of the SUV. “I can’t wait to see Becca - it’s my big test of this whole secret agent thing!”  
“Yes,” Will said. “Just...tone it down a little. Be yourself.”

“Don’t know any other way!” Jaime replied with that unflinching smile.

 

Will stepped up to the front door, and Jaime followed him; he thought nothing of using his own key to open the door and walk into the apartment first. He found three people inside: Rebecca, a Japanese girl her age and a woman who - judging from the clear look at their faces Will got when they turned to look at him - was her mother. The three were sitting on Jaime’s old couch, taking up the whole width of it in fact, while the TV opposite them showed some series. The closed-captioning on the screen moved too fast for Will to discern the dialogue, and he certainly wasn’t hearing the spoken parts over the woman’s voice.

 

“Oh, Jaime!” she said. “We just got here, I hope you don’t mind that we made ourselves at home a bit - Becca was so nice to ask us in.”

“Not a problem, Mrs. Himura,” Jaime said. “Thank you for looking after Becca, that was very nice of you.”

“Not that you would have had to if you had shown up,” Becca said, not getting up from her position on the couch as she crossed her arms and stared at her elder sister.

“Oh, it was no bother at all,” Mrs. Himura said, then tapped her daughter on the shoulder. “Say goodbye to your friend, Kathryn.”

Kate had just finished turning to look at her mother, but quickly turned back towards Becca and caught her in a quick embrace. With the hug done, she waited for Becca to look at her before she spoke. “Bye, Becster,” she said. “See you tomorrow?”

Becca smiled for Kate. “Yeah, see you tomorrow, Kate. We’ll talk later.”

“‘k,” Kate said. “Love you!” That said, Kate gave Jaime and Will a quick “Bye!” before her mother grabbed her by the hand and the two of them evacuated the premises, leaving only Jaime, Will and Becca’s mood.

“Whew!” Will said. “What a day. Who’s hungry?”

Becca refused to move her eyes off of Jaime, and so didn’t “hear” Will at all. “What the hell, Jaime? Where were you?”

Jaime’s smile continued its bulletproof status. “We went to dinner - which was lovely - and then we went back to Will’s to spend the night together. After that, we realized I was missing my purse, and we drove back to the restaurant. My purse was there, but my phone was gone! And then we had to drive all the way back here! So, we were busy, Becca.”

Becca’s eyes went wide. “You were...busy?” She scoffed, but then wiped her eyes. “...too busy to **text?** ”

“We would have called,” Will said. “But we didn’t have your number, it was only in Jaime’s phone and Jaime’s phone was...stolen, or something, so we...Rebecca?” It was only then that he noticed Jaime’s little sister wasn’t looking at him, but at Jaime, and Jaime was just smiling at her.

“What the hell are you **smiling** about, Jaime?” Becca shouted as she jumped to her feet. “You **abandoned** me at school, no warning, no nothing! So you and your boyfriend could fuck! What the **hell** , Jaime?” Becca collapsed back onto the sofa and wiped her eyes again, this time needing her whole sleeve to dry her cheeks. “What the **hell**.”

Jaime simply stood there, smile not moving - but the rest of her went stock still as well. “It - this outburst doesn’t make -” Her face twitched for a moment, the smile struggling to reassert itself. “Becca, you were all right. You’re a big girl, you don’t need me. In fact -”

“ _ **What?**_ ” Becca shouted, panic rising in her eyes.

“Um!” Will said, rushing over to grab Jaime by the shoulders from behind. “I think we’re both just glad you’re okay,” he said quickly, “and to be honest it was all my fault anyway, I rushed Jaime at the restaurant and I didn’t think to put your number into my phone, so…”

“Yes, it was…” Will felt Jaime shiver in his hands. “I mean, no, this was…” Jaime’s hand went to her forehead, trying to soothe a sudden stabbing pain in her skull. “We…” Her legs chose that moment to lose power and go slack, dropping her to the floor.

Will was the one with his hands on Jaime, but it was Becca that jumped to her feet and rushed to catch her. “ **Jaime!** ” she shouted. “Jaime, are you all right?”

“The sofa!” Will said. He took a knee next to Jaime and put her arm on his shoulders to help her to her feet. The way he carried her to the couch wasn’t so much with as alongside Becca’s help, but after a few tense seconds they had Jaime sitting on the couch with the two of them standing to each side of her.

Becca desperately shook Jaime’s shoulders as her sister’s eyes fluttered. “Jaime! Jaime, wake up!” She looked back to Will, the anger from moments ago replaced with sheer panic. “ **Do** something, you’re a doctor!”

 

Will stood frozen. Sitting before him was his girlfriend of three years, rebuilt with technology he had pioneered, and he had no idea what was happening with her. The phone in his pocket was already vibrating, no doubt a call from Berkut Operations about whatever the remote telemetry was showing. Will instantly knew two things - one, that whatever they were seeing back at Wolf Creek would be just as confusing and impossible as what he was seeing right in front of him, and two, that he had to pretend - for Becca’s sake - that there was something he could do. First Aid Theater, then: he reached for Jaime’s left arm and straightened it to take a crude pulse reading at her wrist. Weak, but steady; Will breathed a sigh of relief that at least she wasn’t dying.

 

As Will counted Jaime’s pulse one more time, her eyes finally stabilized and locked onto Becca, who was still leaning over her sister, her own eyes wide with panic. “Becca…” Jaime whispered.

“Oh my **god** , Jaime!” Becca cried out, and swept Jaime up in a big hug. She squeezed her sister as hard as she could before moving back so she could see Jaime’s lips. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“I...I’m not all right…” Jaime stuttered, resisting the urge to bury her face in Becca’s shoulder. “Something’s _wrong…_ ”

“Yes!” Will chimed in, desperate to redirect the conversation. “It must have been that car accident!”

 

Jaime turned towards Will, and stared up at him for a moment. Will stared back, giving her a nod and mouthing _It’s a secret_ to her - despite Becca not looking his way. Jaime refocused on Becca, and when she opened her mouth, she could even hear the truth spilling out of her lips - _Sure, I was in a car accident, but then Will replaced half my body with robot parts and now I have to be a super-secret killer for the government_ \- but as she looked at her little sister, Jaime knew she couldn’t put Becca at risk like that. Who knew what Will’s boss would do if she spilled everything now. “Yes…” She nodded slowly. “There was...we were in a car accident, Becca.”

“ **What?** ” Becca turned to Will. “Why didn’t you **say** anything? What happened, is Jaime all right?”

“It was...it was minor, Rebecca,” Will replied, letting out the breath he’d been holding.

“Apparently fucking not!” Becca shouted back.

“I - we thought it was nothing!” Will protested, and looked to Jaime.

Becca’s eyes followed Will’s back to her sister, who continued the story. “Yes, Becca, it was...I just bumped my head on the door, and we thought it was nothing, but…” Jaime tried and failed to smile for her sister. “Maybe we were wrong.”

“But you’re going to the hospital now, right?” Becca said, the worry and panic reentering her voice.

Will quickly shook his head out of Becca’s field of vision. “No, Becca,” Jaime said. “Will just need to keep an eye on me. He’s a doctor, after all, he knows what to look for.”

Becca looked back to Will, her eyes narrowing. “Some help he’s been so far.”

Will took a second to compose himself as the whole day seemed to be rushing in on him once again. “Actually,” he fibbed, “I can do you one better than a hospital.” Leaving Becca behind was a good opportunity to let his feelings bubble to the surface for a moment with a heavy, rasping sigh, but when that was done he was already at his briefcase, browsing it for the small first-aid kit he kept inside. He returned to the sofa with an unlabelled paper sachet that opened to reveal a silvery-looking adhesive patch. “It may not look like it,” Will said, “but this little sensor can replace a whole medical monitoring suite. You just put it on like this” - Will brushed a few locks of hair from Jaime’s temple and then applied the patch - “and it gives you all kinds of information.” Will reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone; with a few taps on the touchscreen, he brought up a live readout of Jaime’s telemetry, quickly adjusting the view to just the biological values before granting Becca a glimpse. “See? We don’t need to put her in a hospital just to find out how she’s doing.”

Becca peered at the screen for a moment. “...okay. I guess.” She looked back to Will. “How does it work?”

“Oh, you know,” Will said, “it’s basically a medical lab on a chip, just different...sensors. It works by near-field communication, so you can get a live readout with a portable scanner, or, well, a suitably modified phone like this.”

“Hmm.” Becca says. “Figure I’m not allowed to see this?”

“It’s got a ways to go before I submit it for FDA approval,” Will admitted. “The important part is that I can’t see anything wrong with Jaime right now.” He turned to Jaime. “While I do have about half of an ICU in my apartment, we’ll have to take it easy for the rest of the evening, okay? If you get another attack, we **are** going to the hospital, no excuses.”

Jaime nodded, then looked back to Becca. “Everything’s going to work out, Becca,” she said. She tried another smile, but still couldn’t keep it going. “I’m fine. I promise.”

“And I promise I’ll have your sister back here tomorrow to pick you up for school at the latest, Rebecca,” Will said. “Oh! While you have my new phone, would you give me your number, just in case we do end up having to go to the hospital? I don’t want to keep you out of the loop again.”

“Sure thing,” Becca said, and started tapping at the screen.

“Oh! I meant you -” Will paused as he saw it was too late to stop Becca fiddling with his phone. “I meant you just tell me it.”

Jaime smiled - for real this time. “You should have known better, Will.”

“Yes, I...um,” Will said. “I feel really terrible about leaving you alone here, Rebecca. Do you have something to eat for dinner? I could cook something really quick, or -”

“No!” both Sommers sisters exclaimed simultaneously.

“That’s...cool of you, but I’ll just go get a burrito or something,” Becca replied.

“Okay, I’ll…” Will mumbled. “I’ll grab some of your things for the night, Jaime.”

“Thanks,” Jaime said, and sat up as Will walked off. She watched him go for a second, then turned back to Becca. “I’m so sorry for missing you at school today, Becca.”

“You should be,” Becca replied. “Letting some stupid car crash stop you.” She smirked, but only for a moment before hugging Jaime again. “Don’t scare me like that **ever** again, okay?” She didn’t let go, depriving Jaime of the chance to respond right away.

Jaime drew her close, whispering “I’m so sorry...” to her little sister.

 

* * *

 

With an overnight bag slung over Will’s shoulder, he and Jaime made their way back outside. They were barely three steps into their walk to where Jaime’s dark-green Honda CR-V was when Jaime noticed Will making a point of increasing the distance between them. He looked around to make sure there was nobody besides them on the street, then briefly turned back as if to look for Becca following them, before he finally turned back to Jaime.

 

“...how do you feel?” he asked.

“Weird,” Jaime replied. She tapped the patch plastered to her forehead. “That’s not actually doing anything, is it?”  
“Oh, that’s...that’s just a garden-variety antimicrobial silver patch, just...theater,” Will said, looking at her some more.

“The...whatever you want to call the stuff you put in me, it feels...well, I don’t feel them at all,” Jaime continued as she peeled the patch off and crumpled it up. “It feels like my legs, my arm. But I’ve been trying to remember how I got home, and...I can’t.” She looked to Will with concern. “That’s bad, right?”

“Yeah, that’s...not good,” Will said. “Nothing immediately threatening, I think, but...we moved too fast.” He shook his head. “You recovered so quickly, I just...I wasn’t thinking about the long-term effects. We’ll have to get you checked out as soon as possible.”

“I remember the drugs,” Jaime said. “Something made me not act like myself. Or maybe it wasn’t the drugs.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Will said quietly. “You must be imagining things, Jaime.”

“Uh, _excuse_ me, I’m pretty sure I know when I can’t remember things,” Jaime replied with a harsh glare.

Will’s face went pale and his next breath was a labored one. “Jaime,” he began, “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation. The important thing right now is that we stay calm. Okay? Just stay calm.”

Jaime’s glare intensified. “You know what is doing this, don’t you? You know what made me act like someone else, what is erasing my memory. It’s something **you** put in my head.”

“It’s not supposed to do that!” Will said. “Jaime, all I wanted to do was help you.”

“What did you **do?** ” Jaime hissed.

“It’s...it’s part of the bionic interface,” Will said. “It can stimulate parts of your brain, and regulate your neurotransmitters and levels of hormones, to...protect you. But it’s not working right, and it might be making you not think straight right now, so the really important thing is that you try to stay calm and -”

“I’m pretty sure I’m thinking straight **now!** ” Jaime shouted, and started to round her car towards Will. “We are going back to your lab and you are taking your fucking **mind control** out of my Goddamn head -”

_Miss Sommers,_ Jonas Bledsoe said, his voice coming in on her right ear like he was standing right beside her. _I think it’s time I joined this conversation. For starters, I would like to recommend that you don’t have a shouting match about classified technology on the street. Perhaps we can continue inside your car?_

Jaime whirled around to her right mid-step. “Wha - what’s going on?”

_What’s going on is that we can see what you see and hear what you hear,_ Bledsoe said. _You’re on a direct line to Berkut Operations. The Duty Officer called me as soon as your conversation became more serious. And speaking of this conversation, would you mind telling your boyfriend to pick up the call on his phone? I imagine he doesn’t want to be left out._

“Wi-Will?” Jaime stuttered, staring into empty space down her street. “Your boss wants you to pick up your phone.”

“...okay,” Will said, unlocking the car from his side and climbing in. As Jaime made her way into the passenger seat, Will pulled his door closed and dug out his buzzing phone. Jaime pulled her door close with a very positive snap, and then Will took the call and put the phone on speaker.

 

“Fantastic,” Jonas Bledsoe said. “You were saying, Miss Sommers?”

“Uh…” Jaime looked at Will.

“The controls are unstable, Bledsoe,” Will said. “I’ve done what I can to stabilize them, but, ah, we’re running into some...issues.” He coughed. “Like the terms of this arrangement.”  
“I don’t recall asking for your version, Anthros,” Bledsoe said. “Miss Sommers, we’re monitoring you from here. There was a brief problem with the system, and we’ve taken it offline while we try to make some improvements - both for us **and** for you.”

The fire returned to Jaime’s voice. “I doubt **that**.”

“Miss Sommers, believe me, having you act the way you have been over the last six hours is not what anyone wants,” Bledsoe replied. “Dropping in and out of consciousness or simply agreeing to everything anyone tells you aren’t very good attributes for a bartender _or_ an operative - and I understand that having something influencing your behavior isn’t exactly the greatest feeling in the world. Believe it or not, Miss Sommers, I want you to be happy - happy soldiers actually get things done.”

“I am **not** -” Jaime started to shout.

“I apologize, Miss Sommers,” Bledsoe said. “But I meant what I said. For now, the system is turned off - which is incredibly dangerous, both to you and to others. That system is what regulates your strength, too. It’s what will keep you from breaking your sister’s back if you hug her a little too tight.” Jaime turned a little pale at that. “It has to be brought back online, for your safety and for the safety of those around you. So, we can keep troubleshooting as we bring the system back up one part at a time - including your input so you feel like yourself - or you can come in to get checked out by our secondary team, but that’ll be an in-depth diagnosis from the ground up that’ll take a few weeks of constant testing here at Wolf Creek, which is a headache I really don’t need right now and I don’t think you’ll want, either.”

 

Jaime opened her mouth to reply, but Bledsoe kept talking. “ **But** , if I let you run around out there with the system turned off, I need to know you’re reliable. You just rewarded my trust by upholding your cover, and I’m willing to extend you the courtesy of making that call yourself. So you tell me how you want to play this.”

Jaime glared at the phone in silence, but eventually relented with a huff. “I guess we’ll do it your way.”

“Good to hear you’re on board, then,” Bledsoe said. “We’ll talk details tomorrow. For now I recommend you both get some rest. We’re here in case anything comes up. I trust that’s everything settled, then?”

Jaime’s silence said that nothing was settled.

“Good Night, Miss Sommers, Anthros,” Bledsoe said. Then the line disconnected.

Will sucked in a breath quickly and let it out very, very slowly; Jaime could hear him mumble a countdown in Latin to himself. “...do you want to get something to eat on the way?” Will asked.

“No,” Jaime said, crossing her arms.

“I really wish all this hadn’t happened,” Will said as he started the car. “I’m sorry, Jaime. For...everything.”

Jaime turned back towards the windshield. For what seemed like forever to Will, she just stared straight ahead saying nothing. “I understand you were trying to help,” she said. “And I’m grateful. But...I don’t know what’s going on, Will, and I’m angry, and scared, and confused. And you meant well, but...you did this to me.”

“I know,” Will said, and then it seemed like forever again that he struggled to come up with more words. “I’ll...I’ll make this right, Jaime. I promise.”

Jaime sighed, and her eyes dropped to look at her hands. She reached across the car, and took Will’s right hand off the steering wheel. “I know.” She smiled at him. “Maybe start by telling me about...all of this,” she said, waving her bionic right arm at her bionic legs.

Will brightened up and answered her smile with one of his own. “Oh, that is definitely my topic,” he said, starting the car. “So, ah, where to start...ah! Tell me, Jaime, how much do you know about nanotechnology?”

 

* * *

 

Wrapping up Chapter Three, this part of the story serves as the proper introduction of “the controls” after alluding to them over the course of the last chapter. We realized we had never really given these their due before, so today we’re diving into a little explanation of the how and why.

One problem we felt the TV show had was that Berkut was essentially two for two on their bionic subjects going rogue on them; sure, Jaime eventually fell in line, but surely a military program of this size would eventually get to this point and ask themselves how they can make their new “weapon system” function more reliably. Even if we assume that the subject would be a well-adjusted volunteer with both absolute loyalty and a full understanding of what would happen to her (or him), we have to assume that a change of this enormity would produce psychological issues in just about everyone. Taken together with the experimental nature of the technology, there’s really no good excuse not to try to monitor and regulate the whole “system” - which necessarily includes the brain of the augmentee.

To influence Jaime’s brain function to the degree shown would obviously require a very thorough and invasive interface between the bionics and her brain.Tens of thousands of extremely fine, extremely sensitive electrodes have been seeded throughout her brain where they not only monitor her brain activity, but can also be used to deliver highly-targeted, miniscule electric currents. Now this isn’t like the (highly inaccurate) portrayal of electroconvulsive therapy in, say, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest - these currents are not strong enough to trigger even localized seizures, nevermind pain, but instead serve to activate parts of Jaime’s brain in a deliberate way. Together with being able to essentially continually dose Jaime with artificial neurotransmitters and adjust hormone levels, the controls can in theory achieve a fairly sophisticated adjustment of her brain activity - and as her brain activity patterns are mapped via continuous recording and analysis of the electrode measurements, this will only improve. But the system isn’t just intended to influence Jaime, it also forms part of her link to the bionic systems under her control. For now, these links are rather crude, so most uses of her bionics will have to be very deliberate and include very obvious “unnatural” activation patterns, but with continuing development, who knows how soon Jaime will be able to really control her bionics as true extensions of her body?

But that’s the line from Berkut’s lab boys. You’ve seen the damage that badly-configured controls are causing to Jaime’s well-being, how they can be used to pacify her or (maybe worse) influence her more subtly. For the time being, we’ve chosen to portray this as a relatively crude process, as Jaime is literally the prototype for this, but also because we don’t want to warp her and leave it to the reader to figure out what’s actually her and what’s the controls - when Berkut subverts her free will, we want you to notice.

Is it dark and messed up? You betcha. And we hope that as we tell the story and take this further, you’ll see exactly how dark and messed up it is. Really, you’ve got to wonder what Berkut is so afraid of...

On to more chapter-specific things: Will gives a very short overview of how Jaime’s bionic arm is actually built. To the best of our knowledge, a construction method along these lines would be needed to create bionic limbs powerful enough to do what our bionic women do. One question that Will does somewhat gloss over is the power system actually consists of three layers: ultracapacitors provide quick energy bursts on demand, being able to charge and discharge much quicker than any battery could while keeping a comparable energy density. Ultracaps are still years away from practical applications at this time, but they’re plausible enough for our “just ahead of the current tech” Berkut. These ultracapacitors are in turn charged by fuel cells that convert blood sugar into power. Okay, so far so good, but as you might imagine, the human body has evolved a fairly sophisticated system for regulating blood sugar, but it wouldn’t be able to deal with fuel cells sucking up enough sugar to power superhuman feats of strength -  even if sugar levels never get low enough to starve the body’s cells, wildly swinging blood sugar levels are essentially what diabetes is all about. You really, really don’t want to confuse or even overtax the body’s own regulation system. (If you crave a good scare, search for “diabetic ketoacidosis”. It’s not a pretty way to go.) Nevermind actually dissolving enough sugar for serious power in the first place... the only good solution here is to essentially built more transport capacity for sugar into nanomachines and introduce those into the bloodstream. These machines can react to quick fluctuations in local blood sugar concentration and trickle-release as well as hoover up glucose, buffering both intake and consumption and greatly relieving the stress on Jaime’s body.

Also, say hello to Rebecca Louise “Becca” Sommers! We’ve decided to stress early that Becca is a big part of Jaime’s life; they’ve been through some rough times together, and it’ll be the strength of their bond that keeps Jaime on an even keel going forward. We’re sticking with Becca being deaf. Oh, and you’ll be seeing more of Kate, too. We felt it was important that Becca, difficult as she can be sometimes, have at least one true peer and friend. (Plus, we’re totes psyched to get to write like this! All that military and spy talk is sooo lame.)

Dialogue in italics without quotation marks are direct transmissions to Jaime’s bionic ear. Not sure if we ever stated that before, but there is is. It can get a bit difficult to develop good shorthand for different ways of communication as they crop up, but we’ll try to keep it consistent and hopefully easy to follow from context.

When you talk to Jonas Bledsoe, you’re never quite sure why you disagree with him, but you are pretty sure you don’t like him.


	4. Chapter 4

Twenty minutes later, Jaime Summers had learned two things: one, that nanotechnology was a fascinating and exhaustive topic when Will got started on it, and two, that Will had hidden approximately half of his life from her. The way his speech touched on prototypes, lab work and secret meetings with government officials had her almost convinced that she had to be the most gullible person in the universe to not even suspect any of this, but on the other hand, she wouldn’t have believed any of it two days before. Her world had become bigger, weirder and a whole lot scarier, and she wasn’t quite sure yet how she would deal with that. The thought weighed heavily on her mind when Will took his car down the ramp to the parking garage built under the apartment complex where he lived, and only the challenge of navigating the garage and finding his assigned parking spot got Will to briefly stop talking at all. Jaime's continued silence, which she had maintained the whole ride there, inevitably led to Will talking again.

 

“You...you haven’t said anything for a while,” Will said.

"Not a whole lot to say," Jaime said.

"No questions?" Will asked. "Anything you want me to explain again?"

"Just -" Jamie sighed. "It's hard for me to accept this, Will. I get that you think all of this is exciting, but this...this is my worst nightmare, Will. And that's all I can think about, that this is - “ she took a breath to gather her thoughts - “actually, this is  _ worse _ than the worst thing I can imagine happening to me, because before today, I couldn't have imagined this ever happening to anyone, let alone to me." She put a hand on his, resting on the steering wheel. "You understand, right?"

“Yes,” Will lied.

"Will..." Jaime said.

“Yes,” Will said, not looking at her. “I mean, of course I, I understand, it’s…” He did the thing where he slowed his breath and counted up and down in Latin - Jaime had heard him mumble it often enough, though never quite as clearly. “I understand,” he finally said, hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel. “I’m...I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

"Me too," Jaime said, rubbing Will's hand. "I wish you could have told me the truth about...about all of this before. Or at least before you...did this to me.” She fell silent for a moment. “You did it to save me. But I don’t feel very saved right now. I feel like...like I was finally getting my life together with you, and now it’s all broken again.”

“It’s not fair,” Will said.

“That’s not on you,” Jaime said. “This isn’t about fair and unfair for me. I’m scared, Will. I haven’t stopped being scared since I woke up, no matter how much you have tried to explain things and make it seem better. I just woke up with this terrifying new life that I apparently have no choice about and is everything I hate, and it’s put not just my life but Becca’s life in danger.” She sighed. “I...I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can be okay with any of this. I just know I have to try to...do what I can about this.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. "And I want to do it with you, Will. I believe you when you say you were trying to save my life, and you still want to help.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I want to get back to just you and me, Will. We'll get there together. Okay?"

 

“Okay,” Will said, a hollow little sound. “Jaime…” He sighed again. “Jaime, why don’t you go on ahead, you know the way up. I’ll be with you in a minute, I just...I need to...I have to finish up something.”

"Okay," Jaime said. She gave Will a peck on the cheek. "I love you, Will Anthros."

That made him smile a bit. “And I love you, Jaime,” he said.

Jaime smiled right back, and opened the door. "Maybe I'll make myself something to eat after all." She unbuckled herself and climbed out. "See you upstairs," she said, leaning down to give him one more smile before closing the door behind her.

 

Jaime made her way to the nearby elevator, its interior built from matte brushed metal and spotless mirrors, then pressed the button for the top floor. She smiled at Will one last time as the doors shut in front of her.

 

When he was sure she was gone, Will collapsed against the steering wheel and cried.

 

\---

 

If Jaime had been in a better state of mind, she might have been deeply unsettled by the fact that her new artificial hand still opened the thumbprint lock on Will’s apartment door. As it was, the door clicked open for her and the lights automatically went on inside, illuminating the black and white temple of polished surfaces and no handles. Jaime made straight for the liquor cabinet, selected a tumbler from the bottom and a bottle of St. George gin from the top, and a minute later dropped onto the black leather sofa, drink in hand. She’d have to check her bedroom drawer to make sure she had everything here for spending the night and freshening up in the morning, but right then, three fingers of gin on two ice ovals were much, much higher on her list of priorities. She looked past the matching black leather lounge seat kitty-corner to the sofa and out the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking San Francisco; she took a sip of her gin as headlights illuminated the streets heading uphill in the distance. The TV, mounted halfway down the adjoining wall to the window, clicked on at a touch of the remote. Behind her stretched a desert of floor tiles, twice the size of her bathroom at home with only an austere dining table and chairs on it that Jaime knew were more used for work than entertaining.. And behind that, Will’s TV chef kitchen, one extra step up on a platform for added class.

 

She had heard Will enter; in fact she had heard the elevator descend, ping open at the bottom, then rise again, but she wasn’t in the mood to dwell on it. Will pulled off his jacket and hung it next to the apartment door on a little rack before noticing her sitting in the middle of the apartment.

 

“Oh,” he said when he saw the drink in her hand. “I could,” he continued, “I mean, I would have...whipped up something. I’ve been practicing.”

“Thanks, but…” Jaime raised her glass and smiled. “This is more what I need.”

“Right,” Will said. “So, uh, food,” he added. “We’re ordering in, I think. Whatever you want.”

“Will,” Jaime said. “Just relax. I’m not  **mad** . Just...confused and scared. But not of you.” She rubbed the sofa next to her. “Take a seat.”

“Yes, well,” Will said as he approached. “I’m trying to relax, Jaime. It’s just that, well, I actually am really hungry. I haven’t had a sit-down meal since…” Will fumbled for something with his empty hands, and then sat down next to Jaime, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his thighs. “So, whatever you want, Jaime. I mean it.”

“...sushi?” Jaime asked, smiling at him.

“Excellent,” Will said, smiling back a bit. “I’ll go make the call.”

 

Will did make the call while Jaime sipped on her gin; if nothing else, it still tasted the same to her and produced a warm, familiar buzz in her head. She hardly noticed Will sitting back down and turning on the plasma flatscreen TV opposite the couch; the image was that of some nature movie still paused on his DVD player from the last time they’d sat down here. Will produced another large remote and resumed the movie. When the narrator began to explain the specialized gliding feathers that enable owls to fly silently, Jaime took the chance to slide herself a little closer to Will, and he didn’t retreat from her. Then she put her arm - her real arm - around his shoulders and rested her head next to his. By the time the doorbell rang about forty-five minutes later, the movie had reached the part where it earnestly pleaded for increased conservation efforts for endangered birds, while Will’s right arm had snaked all the way around Jaime’s back and drawn her into a tight embrace.

 

“Don’t go anywhere,” he quipped. “I’ll get it.”

 

Will untangled himself from Jaime and rose up. His right side was still hot from her warmth, and he felt that slowly cool off as he navigated his way out of the seating area and past the TV wall to reach the door. His hand reached for the security panel mounted into the wall, the display waking up as it sensed the approach of his hand, and his fingers came close to the flashing green button that would buzz the sushi delivery guy into the building.

 

At that point, a bullet passed about six inches in front of Will’s face and punched a new peephole in the door.

 

Will half-fell, half-threw himself to the ground, eyes clenched shut in reflex against the wooden splinters and dust that he thought he felt on his face. “What was that?” he heard Jaime ask, and when his eyes flew open, he saw her on the sofa, drink still in hand looking at him with a confused expression.

“Get down!” Will shouted, crawling across the floor towards her.

Jaime looked around. “What are you -”

“ _ Get down! _ ” Will screamed again, reaching up to pull her down to the floor with him - and a moment later a second round blasted through that enormous floor-to-ceiling window and buried itself in the sofa.

“Holy shit!” Jaime shouted, and dropped to the floor herself.

 

They both layed stationary on the floor for a few seconds, but no more bullets came their way. Down the hallway, the stairwell door slammed shut as the delivery guy made good his escape. Jaime looked at Will, her eyes wide and breathing short.

“What - what do we do now?” Jaime asked, her voice very far from steady.

“Uh - uh…” Will looked around, then stared into Jaime’s eyes - or rather, one eye in particular. “A little help, Jonas?”

 

\---

 

Far away, in the bowels of Wolf Creek, the Operations room had started working that exact same question the instant the feed from Jaime registered what the Wolf Creek staff could clearly tell was a bullet impact. Camera feeds, telemetry from the bionics mounted in Jaime, and emergency traffic from all over the city instantly appeared on a half-dozen screens. However, only Nathan Ambrose, the duty officer, and Jonas Bledsoe were present, and time was not on their side.

 

“Talk to me,” Jonas Bledsoe said, stepping up next to Ambrose.

“Registering two gunshots on the externals, Sir,” Ambrose said, quickly rotating a wireframe model of Will’s apartment on his screen. “Perimeter cams aren’t picking up anyone outside, penetration on the armored glass rules out anything below a .308. I’m trying to get a fix on the field of fire but the interior cams aren’t good enough to trace the impact holes. Team One is gearing up, they’re fifteen minutes out by helo. Still acquiring the target.”

Bledsoe took a seat next to him and looked over the dozens of hits the computers had cranked out already. “There’s no time,” he muttered, and took an extra moment to reconsider his next few words. “Put Tin Man in full combat mode.”

“...copy, stand by for combat mode,” Ambrose said, clearing his screen and switching to a display of Jaime’s vitals. A couple clicks highlighted an option in a drop down menu, and brought up a PIN prompt. He took in short breath and turned to Bledsoe. “...confirm combat mode?”

Bledsoe didn’t flinch. “Confirming Six - Sierra - Zero - Hotel.”

“Copy, Six - Sierra - Zero - Hotel,” Ambrose repeated as he entered the code. One last moment of indecision, and then he punched the enter key. “Combat mode engaged. Tin Man is live.” He drew in another breath, this one much longer. “Here we go.”

 

\---

 

Will knew it was coming, but even he wasn’t prepared for how quickly it happened. A moment ago, he was looking Jaime in the eyes as they both stared at each other in wide-eyed panic. Then time ticked over and he was holding on to someone - something - entirely different. The scared and shaking young woman exhaled, but didn’t relax; instead, it seemed like Jaime’s whole body tensed up to fight, her expression flattened out as she ceased to notice Will was there at all.

Jaime cocked her head to the side - the right side. “Orders?” she asked. A second later, she replied. “Understood.”

And with that, one arm snapped out and grabbed Will by the collar, yanking him roughly to her side and then pinning him to the floor underneath her. In reflex, his arms flailed against hers, but the more he struggled, the more her augmented right hand weighed down on him like an industrial press. He looked up at her and saw her head swivel from left to right, scanning the environment for every last detail. When her head was turned all the way over her right shoulder, it tilted downwards and her eyes fixed directly at him. The face that looked down on him was a Jaime Summers Halloween mask that showed no expression at all, with the corners of her mouth in perfect line with her lips. It stayed that way even when she opened her mouth to speak.

 

“Get on the sofa and hold on,” she said.

“...hold on for  _ what _ ?” Will blurted out, the filter between his brain and mouth long gone.

Jaime ignored his question, his concerns irrelevant to the mission at hand. Her eyes fell upon a spot on the floor that looked good for what she was planning to do; with no warning, she took her hand off Will’s chest, hauled back her right elbow and then snapped her arm downward, punching through the tiles and burying her fist into the concrete floor below. Satisfied with that, her eyes flicked back to Will. “Do it,” she said.

Will picked himself off the floor, only for her hand to snap onto him again - his shoulder this time, pressing him down hard enough that he couldn’t help but cry out.

Jaime fixed Will with that dead-eyed stare again. “And stay low.”

 

As Will maneuvered past her and pressed against the sofa, he saw her dig the heel of her left foot into the hole in the floor. Her whole body was tensed, just waiting for the right moment to move, and he realized that he hadn’t seen her take a single deep breath since the activation - or, really, take any breath at all. Knowing why didn't comfort him much.

 

“I’m sorry,” Will whispered. 

 

But Jaime wasn’t listening to that; one last look at Will confirmed that he was on the sofa and clinging to it as well as he could, and that was all she needed to see. He thought he saw something ripple through her just before she snapped from crouched to fully upright and spun around on the spot. The next thing Will knew was that the sofa bucked under him and filled the whole apartment with a terrible screech as its metal feet scoured tracks through the floor tiles. Then there was a crash that showered Will with splinters of wood and concrete, rocking the sofa from side to side, and finally the cushion that he had dug his fingernails into ripped free when the sofa stopped, throwing him clear to the floor. The floor, Will quickly noticed, was not the white ceramic tile of his own apartment, but the dull grey carpet of the hallway outside. With shaking hands and racing heartbeats, Will pushed off the ground and rolled onto his back to trace the path the sofa had taken. The apartment door was in too many pieces to count, the largest of which would have fitted nicely into a ring binder, and the sofa’s steel frame had also taken a large bite out of the doorframe and the wall to its side, though not without losing much of its leather covering and stuffing in the process.

 

What he couldn’t see was Jaime; a moment later, there was another loud noise, crashing glass followed by the echoing sounds of traffic from the streets far below. Will crawled forward, catching a fresh, sharp wind that helpfully told him about all the little cuts and nicks on his face and throat. By the time he was close to the doorframe, he struggled to his knees, then took a very, very careful peek into the apartment. Jaime was still nowhere to be seen, but one of the armored glass panels leading out to the balcony was missing, busted clear out of its frame.

 

Jaime had made it out. She had just taken a different exit.

 

\---

 

Sara Corvus was used to waiting, but she was running out of time. After the close encounter on the back country road, the closest she had dared to get to William Anthros was roughly half a klick, several blocks out - a rooftop perch far enough away to not get tangled up in whatever security perimeter Berkut was running, high enough up to match his penthouse and with a good angle on the glass front. If you could call whatever those panels were made of “glass” - she was pretty sure it had deflected her first shot just enough to miss him, obviously hadn’t helped the second, and god damn it why was this so fucking  **hard** ? But she couldn’t let the frustration get the better of her, and so she stayed in position, body flat on the blanket on top of the rooftop gravel, her eye fixed on the rifle optics she barely needed, her fingertip on the trigger, just waiting for something,  _ any _ sign of movement -

 

Anthros’s girlfriend. Sara had her dead in her sights, but she hesitated. Just seeing her walk around with Anthros less than a day after the collision that had almost killed her told Sara a lot: she had survived the trip to Wolf Creek, Anthros had butchered her up into another doll, and they trusted her enough to let her go outside. The most comforting thought Sara could muster was that Jaime Sommers had been quote-unquote repaired, fitted with some demilitarized version of bionics that Jonas Bledsoe would be willing to jam inside a civilian. That would have been the course of action most adjacent to “decent” and “humane” when it came to treating Anthros’s girlfriend. But civilians were supposed to stay down and duck behind cover when bullets started flying. So watching said civilian spinkick a fucking 300 pound sofa clear across the room and through the door as if it was nothing, well, that told Sara that this was the wrong time for optimism.

 

Then Anthros’s girlfriend launched forward, jumped through one of the intact armor glass panels to the balcony outside and booked it for the balustrade, vaulted over it with a hand on the rail for a quick reverse and then pushed off the damn wall, flinging herself clear across the street onto another empty rooftop.

 

“...fuck,” Sara said.

 

San Francisco whipped past her in a blur as Sara swiveled to draw a bead on Sommers, but she already knew that there was no way to get a snap shot on a moving target at this distance. The sirens in the distance and police scanner feed in her head told Sara knew she was out of time for repositioning to draw her into a killzone. And even if there had been time - no. Sara moved her finger away from the trigger. Not without a chance to see what Anthros and Bledsoe had done to her, without a chance to talk to her. No, she had to stay on task, push aside the red mist and think forward, keep her mind on the  **whole** situation and not just her newest - if pretty fucking big - problem. The suppressor on her rifle was barely warm; she quickly unscrewed it, released the long scope from the optics rail on top of the rifle, then popped out the takedown pins. Everything found its place in the large carrying case at her feet, and Sara Corvus was nothing if not professional when it came to her tools. 

 

Two shots - those two shots stayed on her mind when she got to her feet and hefted the case from the blanket she had rolled out on the bare rooftop. She had all the casings, that was good. Those fancy bullets she had added to Anthros’s living room decorations would be sure to give the Berkut lab boys a couple days of work, but she was certain that her tracks were sufficiently covered when it came to where those bullets had been procured. What really worried her was the sound; two shots, popped off so quickly, that could bring a lot of attention down on her, and attention was the last thing she wanted. It bothered her more than the cold wind blowing across her face, which she hardly noticed at all; attention meant 911 calls, cops coming to check things out, people on the street wondering what that was and coming over to take a look. Still, even with everything going sideways, she couldn’t give in to panic; she had her plan and she was sticking to it. She had it figured out. She just had to go through it, step by step by step, until she was safe and out and in a place where she could think.

 

Down the stairs from the roof access door, past the service room and down another flight; open the door to the residential hallway, making sure to reset the fire alarm at the door so nobody would suspect her tampering with it to get to the roof in silence, and then, well, then it was just a matter of calling the elevator and riding down to the lobby. There was a cab waiting for her right there, and she quickly got in and breathed out a little when the doors closed behind her. With a start, the cab started moving, taking her downwards. She tried to do her best not to acknowledge the little perspex dome in the corner of the cab’s roof. The security cameras in the building were working, the recording equipment wasn’t; nobody would be the wiser until someone pulled the tapes. She could take the car to a little garage she had rented with a preloaded debit card, fake name to go with the fake smile, nothing that traced back to her. Once there, she could stash the car, the gun and her outfit, switch out everything just in case, and then come back later in a couple of days to clean up, if nobody had found it, in the meantime. The CheyTac would be a hard thing to write off, but -

 

The doors opened, and Sara barely had time to register that there was somebody outside - that Jaime fucking Sommers was already outside - before two hands hooked into the doors and she received a kick in the chest that flung her against the back wall of the elevator cab hard enough to start the bleating alarm and switch the lights inside to their low red emergency mode. It would have cracked her ribs, if they were still made out of bone. Sara had to push that thought away just like the automatic damage reports scrolling across a corner of her blurred vision and the shifting patterns of light in front of her. Her arms rose in front of her face from old reflex, absorbing an elbow strike just in time; Sara ducked under the third attack and punched forward, but Jaime was a millisecond faster and stepped out to the side, retaliating with a knee strike that forced Sara into the back corner, followed by an overhead fist that she barely dodged by diving to the ground. Sara had no hair in the back of her neck to stand up, but proximity sensors told her to get ready for Jaime lunging at her; the answer was a kick, enough to lift Jaime off the ground and throw her back ten to fifteen feet, hopefully without crushing her sternum. With a grip for the cab’s handrail, Sara pulled herself to her feet just in time to watch Jaime tuck into her landing in the empty lobby, rolling to foot, knee and hands like a sprinter ready to launch.

 

“Stop!” Sara yelled out, holding her left hand forward. The gesture seemed to mean nothing to Jaime. She just sprung forward into a dead sprint right at Sara, who barely got to dig in her heels before the next assault hit her block. One, two, three times Jaime came at Sara, her right arm striking out, reeling back and slamming forward again so quick that Sara could barely keep up deflecting it with both arms. On the last strike, Sara finally got the angle she was building towards, deflecting the punch to Jaime’s left and grabbing her upper arm in a bid to pull Jaime forward into a toss. That plan lasted about as long as it took Sara to see Jaime’s leg shooting up over her back as she bent forward, lashing out with a scorpion kick that was just the blink of an eye behind Sara’s face. Sara had to let go and Jaime turned the momentum into a flip that found her back on her feet, albeit with her back to Sara - and that, in turn, became another kick that only missed because Sara had already decided to back up rather than try to counterattack.

 

“Stop!” Sara yelled again, and that almost seemed to work; Jaime dropped into a ready stance without committing to another direct attack, and for few seconds the two women circled each other ten feet apart.

“Jaime Sommers, right?” Sara said, keeping her guard up. “I’m not here to fight you.”

Jaime took another step to the right, then planted her foot on the ground, scooting it an inch back until she had her stance just right. Her eyes oscillated between Sara’s hands and feet, trying to discern even the slightest sign of an upcoming move, while her left arm trembled in place.

“I know what they've done to you, Jaime,” Sara said. She looked her in the eyes, straight through to Bledsoe. “I can  **help** you.”

Jaime cocked her head to the right. “Orders?” she asked.

“You don’t have to do what they say,” Sara said. “You’re  **not** one of them.” She took a breath. “Thirty seconds. Give me thirty seconds to explain. We can help you.”

Jaime’s head straightened again. “Understood,” she said. “Kill Sara Corvus.”

Sara opened her mouth to plead for Jaime to hear her one more time, but she stopped herself. “Bastards,” she muttered, raising her arms to defend herself again. “I’m coming for you, Jonas. That’s a promise.”

 

\---

 

“Killcode,” Bledsoe muttered. “Ambrose, I need something -”   
“Already on it,” Ambrose replied.

 

\---

 

Sara Corvus was in deep shit, and she didn’t need the warning icons on her HUD to tell her that. She was running too hot, too fast, too hard, and still barely keeping up with the unflinching killing machine that was trying to ram a couple pounds of titanium-reinforced carbon through her skull. With every blow she was losing ground, stepping back, dodging and blocking, and still that...that  _ thing _ was coming at her with full speed, pistoning its right arm back and forth with unrelenting force. There was a pattern to it, Sara found, or rather a loop, a chain of six moves that Jaime Sommers kept throwing at her again and again, but Sara was quickly running out of lobby to retreat to. Just a glance to the side - something she thought she had heard - and it hit her, that jackhammer fist skipping over a forearm block that was just a moment too slow. Jaime’s fist banged against Sara’s chest, actually lifting the bionic woman off the ground and tossing her back while her counterpart fought to keep traction on the lobby floor. For a moment, Sara could do nothing but vaguely try to tuck into whatever landing she was going to get, which ended up being against the pushbar door to the building’s fire stairs. Sara felt the door give against her back, fly open and dump her out the other side, sending her tumbling down while the automatic fire alarm started blaring.

 

By the time she managed to actually tuck and roll and come to something of a stop at the bottom of the stairs, Sara Corvus counted the third time she should have died. But there was no time to celebrate that, not with Jaime Sommers a half second behind and burning to make Number Four stick.

 

Sara Corvus ran. She kept running, taking the stairs four at a time, trusting her body to take care of the balance and the impact of her feet against the edges of the steps, using her arms only to bounce off the walls when her path veered close enough that it threatened to reduce her speed. Within seconds, she was out of staircase and faced with another fire door; this one she threw herself at, busting it open and spinning herself into a fall that she barely managed to tuck into a roll. Back on her feet, she barely had a moment to register the smell of exhaust and stale air that permeated the underground parking garage before her vision was filled with Jaime Sommers leaping at her. There was no time to dodge or duck or even shift more than a few inches before impact, which sent both of them to the ground into a vicious rolling tangle of knees, elbows and foreheads; when Jaime briefly ended up on top, she seized Sara’s head and pulled it up, only prevented from slamming it back into the concrete below when Sara twisted her hips and kneed Jaime in the side. Finally, Jaime gasped, and Sara knew that she had found at least one weak point; it gave her enough room to push Jaime off her and roll away to the other side.

 

The red HUD screamed at her to finally pay attention. 

 

She hadn’t loaded up before this, just regular maintenance-level food intake, not the kind of boost to her blood sugars that would have let her take on another augment in a straight-up brawl. There was only so much the Ichor could buffer. If her bionics kept burning glucose at this speed, she’d either have to stop in ten to twenty seconds and get her skull caved in by a bionic killing machine, or pass out from hypoglycemic shock, with probably the same outcome. Sara chose to go down fighting, or at least moving; for some reason Jaime had held back her left arm the entire fight except for balancing, and if that meant what Sara thought it meant, then maybe there was one last Hail Mary to try. Dodging and weaving between Jaime’s blows, Sara backed up again, but this time she knew where she was going, even faked a stumble that saw her ending up sitting against the driver’s side door of a powder blue sports car. The wide-eyed look of fear on her face was quite real, though: she saw the end coming for her in the form of Jaime’s right fist, and only ducked away at the last moment. The fist kept going, though, crashing through the sheet metal of the car’s door, ripping up the faux leather of the seat behind it and sending the lights and horn blaring. In a flash, Sara rotated to her knees and threw a punch at the door herself, bursting the safety glass, then slammed her fist down with as much force as she could muster, crumpling the metal on top of Jaime’s dug in arm.

 

Then Sara stumbled back, taking herself out of Jaime’s kicking range, and took a moment to catch her fucking breath, having spent about a half hour of oxygen on three minutes of fighting. Groggy from the effort, Sara reached into her jacket and fumbled for a foil pack from the inside pocket; tearing off the top, she squirted six ounces of glucose paste into her mouth, gulping down what she could. Gradually, the symbols in her HUD backed down from blazing red to stern warning orange, and she dropped the packet on the floor. She forced down one last mouthful of the sickly sweet refined sugar and then wiped her mouth with the back of her left hand, determined to make her exit from the situation.

 

That thing she had trapped just in front of her wasn’t Jaime Sommers. Not that Sara had made the effort to get to know Anthros’s trophy girlfriend before setting out on her plan, but this...this was not a  _ person _ . It was a killer robot irrevocably stuck in a stubborn attempt to kill her, and no matter how many times it futilely tried to dislodge its trapped primary weapon, it kept on going, first almost comically like a flopping fish, then with its legs scrambling for any kind of hold and leverage - the whole time staring blankly into Sara’s eyes, fixated on her orders, her target. Sara only felt bitter satisfaction that she’d made the right bet - the left arm was not bionic, and contributed nothing to getting the machine unstuck. Sara turned to run, but then she heard the sound of rubber screeching over concrete. She looked over her shoulder to see that the sports car had moved - that, in trying to tear loose, Jaime Sommers had dragged an entire damn car with her, and was already positioning herself for the next attempt. Her jacket had already lost its sleeve somewhere inside the twisted metal, and the ragged edges had sliced open the smartskin to expose the milky-white artificial muscles underneath. It took Sara a moment to realize that Jaime wasn’t just trying to tear her arm out of the door, or tear the door from the car; she was trying that so hard that the sharp metal was biting and sawing through the twitching bundles of electroactive polymer, and given a few more minutes of effort, Sara was sure that the shoulder joint would give, too. The computer in Jaime’s head was telling her to kill Sara Corvus, and even if it meant tearing her arm off, Jaime Sommers could not disobey.  And no matter how persistently the machine tried, it seemed unable to decisively free itself.

 

Thank God.

 

Sara turned and stumbled away from the scene in a trance, that swimming head feeling of being close to an explosion, and there was no way to sort her thoughts, to think straight, after a fight like this. Old instinct made her tap all over her body, trying to locate injuries or pieces of shrapnel or any other hazard that could still take her out, but aside from the torn smartskin on her forearms and the zoo of blinking HUD symbols slowly settling back into regular colors, she seemed to be okay, for a certain very conservative value of “okay”.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sara coughed, far more short of breath than she had realized. And then she ran like hell.

 

\---

 

The whole way out, she heard the helicopter; she couldn’t not hear it, even if she still had her natural ears, and running towards the sound - even if it was the only way out - was a deeply unnatural act. Three seconds to the fire exit. Sara steeled herself, picked up her speed and busted through the door in front of her. The glare of the helo’s spotlight was almost immediately compensated by her eyes, letting her glance up briefly to see that these were, indeed, Bledsoe’s goons and not the police. The rotor wash kicked street trash at her as she vaulted the handrail before her and dashed towards the next alley. She had to get away from them, from their spotlight, their guns and most importantly their -

 

The light and the sound drowned out everything else. Even the shadows the spotlight was casting around her were pulsing in a very particular pattern, and any and every reflective surface around her fed the sequence into her system, much faster than she could ever hope to close her eyes - and if that wasn’t enough, the modulated sound pattern did the same thing to her bionic ears. Sara knew what this was - the kill-code hardwired into her systems - and braced herself for her bionics shutting themselves down if the Hail Mary didn’t kick in.

 

Even before she finished the thought, her vision started flickering and her hearing stuttered in and out. Her heart leaped in her chest, but it was only a moment of panic. Her feet stayed underneath her and her vision, though impaired by the flickering shutter effect of her eyes rapidly cycling on and off, stayed with her. They couldn’t disable the kill switch, but they could interfere with it, introducing a different pattern that stopped the code from hitting her systems in time to keep her moving. Her vision turned to shit and she hadn't had a headache like this since Iraq, but she was still moving. And move she did, straight under the Berkut helicopter as fast as her legs could carry her. Without clear vision, she misjudged a turn and ricocheted off the corner, and her vault over the retaining wall was less parkour and more headlong dive, but after a roll in some San Francisco alley muck she was on her feet again and running up the street towards the bright red MUNI sign that meant safety.

 

\---

 

Antoine Ginsburg was having one of those days where his job was to be on a helicopter - not in it, strictly, but leaning out the open side door with only a safety harness to keep him from falling out, rifle in his hands. He had his earmuffs on, so the only things he could hear were the muffled thud of the rotor above him, the whine of the turboshaft engines behind him and his own breath. When he saw the fire exit bust open, he added his own voice - picked up by throat mike, cleaned up and retransmitted - to the mix.

 

“Ops, eyes on target, over,” he said, and his index finger moved from the side of the gun’s receiver to the trigger.

“Copy, pulsing now,” came Nathan Ambrose’s reply, and within a moment the helo’s spotlight started flickering while the PA system kicked out bursts of electronic sound patterns far too unpleasant to be called noise.

 

This was the part where Sara Corvus - who, as of three minutes before, had been dead and buried - was supposed to simply drop to the ground, every system safely shut down, to be restrained and retrieved and then very, very thoroughly examined back at base. It wasn’t a sequence of events that Ginsburg particularly liked, but it made sense to him, and it was his job to bring it about, by hanging out the side of the helicopter and keeping his rifle aimed at Sara Corvus.

 

Except Sara Corvus didn’t drop to the ground. She ran - straight under the chopper.

 

“Fuck!” Ginsburg snapped. “Up, up, take her up!” he shouted, then held on to the side door rail above him as the helo strained upwards, trying to clear Sara Corvus’s maximum jump height. That was the right thing to do, the right order to give, but it stole a few precious seconds from Ginsburg’s attempts to keep his rifle on target, and by the time the helicopter settled into its new flight level and swung around to get a better angle at the back alley, Ginsburg had lost her.

 

That warranted another “Fuck!”, and even when he clicked the optic on his rifle to light-amplification mode, his scan of the alley showed no trace of Corvus.

 

“Go up to five-zero-zero and kick the FLIR in, we’re looking for hot and fast,” he radioed on the internal channel to the pilot, then clicked his set over to the broadcast channel. “Ops, this is Team One Actual, do you read, over?”   
“Operations reads you Lima Charlie, go ahead, over,” Ambrose replied.

“Operations,” Ginsburg said, “Operations, be advised that we have lost the target. I say again, we have lost the target, no eyes on at this time. Entering search pattern now, over.”

“Copy target lost, Team One,” Ambrose said. “Cancel search pattern. Your orders are to extract Tin Man and exfiltrate the area ASAP. Acknowledge orders, Team One, over.”   
“Team One copies orders to retrieve Tin Man and exfil,” Ginsburg replied. “Anything else we should know about this situation, over?”   
“Operations cannot advise further at this time, Team One,” Ambrose said. “Report when you have Tin Man. Out.”

 

And at that point, it was time for the third “Fuck!”.

 

“You heard it,” Ginsburg said, switching back to internal comms. “Set her down on that lot, we’re going in.”  


 

\---

 

The building’s underground parking garage had been designed for many things: capacity, ease of navigation, fire and earthquake safety, and last but not least, price. It had done pretty well on most of these points, but where it had utterly and unashamedly failed was in being conducive to good signal reception. This much was what Antoine Ginsburg had expected when he retraced Sara Corvus’s steps from the fire exit down into the belly of the building, and it was easy to tell he was out of signal when the fancy symbols on his tactical display disappeared, leaving just a small blinking “LOST DATA” in the upper right corner of the HUD built into his ballistic goggles.

 

“Fucking shitshow,” Calavera muttered to himself behind him.

“What did you expect?” Sagabaen replied. “Corvus and a plan. Never worked, never will.”   
“Kill the chatter,” Ginsburg said, eyes fixed forward.   
“They’re not wrong,” Jordan weighed in. “How the hell did we get blindsided on this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sagabaen said.

“Just save it, guys,” Ginsburg said. “Coming up on the door to the garage. Be ready for anything, hooah?”

“Hooah,” Sagabaen and Calavera replied, each in their own quiet way, while Jordan said nothing.

“Sage, take point,” Ginsburg said. “Calavera left, Jordan right.” 

 

That needed no reply, just a quiet rustle of gear as the broad-shouldered filipino soldier squeezed past Ginsburg and took up position next to the door ahead; Ginsburg went to the other side and put his off-hand on the door handle, ready to yank it open, while the other two stacked up behind Sagabaen, passing a clap on the shoulder all the way through the formation.

 

“On go,” Ginsburg said. “One, two, three, go!” 

 

With one smooth motion, he ripped the door open as quickly as he could manage, while the rest of the team poured through the frame and moved to their assigned positions. When Ginsburg went in last, he just saw Sagabaen ahead with his shotgun, taking a knee behind the cover of a structural pillar, while Calavera and Jordan were still advancing through the aisles to the left and right respectively. Ginsburg swiftly followed Sagabaen’s path and sped past him, sprinting for the next pillar, and slammed into cover there. There was no threat or trap in here, only the echoes of a repeated thumping, and the sight of that sound’s source brought them all out of cover, converging back into one group out in the open against every bit of training they’d had.

 

Jaime Sommers had dragged a car sideways for sixty feet. That would have been remarkable enough, had it not been obvious that dragging a car sideways for sixty feet was the last thing she had tried to achieve; the twisted metal on the car’s left side told a tale of hundreds of attempts at ripping her arm free of the wreck, and were it not for the vagaries of auto engineering and lack of leverage, she very well might have actually succeeded at ripping a poster-sized piece of the car’s side off the chassis. As it was, she’d done an equally destructive if not quite finished job on herself; with a proper toolkit, the combat algorithms might have actually tried to dissemble the reinforced shoulder joint on her trapped arm, but lacking that, they had instead tried to rip it free, one way or another. The jacket and the smartskin underneath were total losses, cut to fine ribbons, while severed strands of electroactive polymers, Ichor hoses and fiberoptic cables bloomed from each side of the cut that reached almost all the way down to the artificial bones, all encrusted with a quick-clotted mix of Ichor and blood. And roughly every two seconds, Jaime tried again, and again, and again.

 

“Pretty fucked up,” Calavera said.   
“Why is she...still doing that?” Jordan stammered.

“Gotta kill Corvus,” Sagabaen explained. “Gotta reach Corvus to kill her. Gotta get free to reach Corvus.”

“Holy shit,” Jordan said. “We have to...”

“Miss Sommers,” Ginsburg said, stepping forward. “Everything’s alright now. It’s over. You can stop.”

 

Jaime didn’t stop, didn’t even pause, because that would have required that she acknowledge what Ginsburg was saying.

 

“Oh my God,” Jordan said. 

Ginsburg, however, knew what to do, even if he didn’t like it. He dropped his gun into its sling and retrieved a laminated card, studying it for a moment before he looked at Jaime again. “Tin Man Override,” he said out loud, “Six - Sierra - Zero - Hotel.”

At that, Jaime instantly stopped, and her head rotated to look at Ginsburg. “Override in effect,” she said, then cocked her head to the side. “Orders?”

“Stand down, Tin Man,” Ginsburg said.

“Understood,” Jaime said. 

 

And then, finally, mercifully, she passed out.

 

\---

 

_ Commentary: The First Big Fight _

 

You can’t have the pilot without the confrontation between Jaime and Sara. The problem is, as portrayed in the show, it doesn’t work. Sara’s motivation and objectives remain unclear throughout, Jaime’s reactions to having her boyfriend murdered right before her are inappropriate, and a 2007 TV stunt budget does not make for a very convincing portrayal of two characters with bionics trying to fight one another. So here’s what we did differently.

 

There’s a previous confrontation at Jaime’s bartending job that we just decided to cut out in the rewrite because it didn’t fit the tone we wanted going forward. (Plus eliminating the guy Jaime takes out in the back alley there, for much the same reasons.) In exchange, we inserted an earlier scene as the aftermath of the collision that almost killed Jaime, to show off Sara’s capabilities earlier and also to make her agenda clearer. Our version of Sara Corvus is after Will Anthros’s life specifically. She’s damaged and ruthless and not in a good place about it, but she’s not blasé about her goals and reluctant to use more force than she has to. This was something we especially wanted to emphasize in this rewrite, taking Sara from a kind of enigmatic, cool, almost predatory presence to someone with a goal and the means to get it who is nevertheless still a few steps away from being the ice cold killing machine she can come across as. On the other side of the equation, the introduction of the controls on Jaime’s system allows us to split the difference on making our version of Jaime less surly and aggressive while also making her a more credible physical threat to Sara despite her lack of training. All of this was somewhat implied in the original fic, but way too obfuscated and frankly up its own ass, so one of our big goals with the rewrite is not only to get the story and the details straight, but also to clarify as much as possible for the reader what is actually going on.

 

The show doesn’t really have time to establish a good sense of the difference in power between Sara and Jaime, but this is stuff we need to write about, so we have to figure it out. To that end, our fight ends up looking a lot more dynamic, faster and more viciously inhuman. To clarify: Sara has the edge in raw physical strength and resilience due to her more extensive augmentation, and also brings professional close combat training to the table. (We’ll get into more details in future chapters of Recycled where we show her time at Berkut.) Jaime has two advantages: one, the controls come preprogrammed with a variety of attack moves and can react and make decisions faster than a human being can, allowing her to react to counters literally as fast as her limbs can be moved. It’s hindered by the rather limited algorithms employed to do so, making her movements more predictable - especially to someone who combines bionic speed and strength with fighting experience like Sara, which is how Sara can keep up and defend herself. This is, however, where Jaime’s second advantage comes in: her bionics are more advanced and efficient than Sara’s, allowing her to sustain the fight much better than Sara, who finds her systems quickly taxed by operating at maximum power without having specifically prepared her energy reserves for the fight. Technical aspects aside, there’s also that Sara’s objective all along remains simply escaping the scene, while Jaime under controls is utterly focussed on killing Sara. This is a fight Sara knows she can’t win, because even if she does overcome Jaime, it’ll just end up with her hurting somebody she doesn’t really want to hurt and giving Berkut more time to send reinforcements. So she has to employ some lateral thinking and situational awareness to make her getaway.

 

We’ve talked a little about the power system on the bionics before, but in writing this, we looked at another potential issue: heat dissipation. At first glance it seemed like a nice enough idea; saying that the bionics are overheating was an easy shortcut to tell you, the reader, that things were getting serious, that the tech has tangible engineering limits, plus it could produce some neat visuals. Imagine a bionic limb hot enough to have its own thermal distortion, plunged into cold water that flashes to steam around it, and that’s the in-character Clever Idea to get back into the fight. Sounds great, right? Except...we figured out that a) EAP packs that are efficient enough to produce the kind of power our augmented characters display wouldn’t really heat up that much unless they were literally operating at peak output for hours, which simply isn’t possible with the total energy they have available, b) if they did heat up that much it would be impossible to shield the organic parts from all that heat, c) the parts involved in bionic limbs all have a much higher temperature tolerance than tissue, so it wouldn’t even get to plausibly malfunction before it kills the user by hyperthermia and d) even if it did somehow get that hot without killing the user it would then be a complete bitch to cool down. Quenching in water, if a limb was hot enough to flash that water into steam, would induce temperature shocks that are likely to be really, really bad for the materials, worse than the gradual heat buildup in the first place. The two most available passive methods of heat transfer - radiation and air convection - both really, really suck for serious cooling. (Convective is better than radiative in an atmosphere, but still limited by the low specific heat of air. Radiative is always super-bad because most things are not ideal black-bodies, but the only realistic option for spacecraft, hence those big black radiator panels you see on just about everything.) The superior active method is evaporative cooling. That’s a solved engineering approach, though - we call that “sweating”, and it’s really the best we could do for bionic limbs, too.

 

Bottom-line: overheating just isn’t enough of an issue to factor in as a serious primary limitation of the bionics, and if it was it would be so difficult to deal with that the whole system would probably never have gotten off the ground to begin with. So yeah. Goodbye, pie in the sky, we’ll stick with the already outlined problems of generating and storing enough power for all these bionic beatdowns. Because any way you slice it, super-strength and super-speed don’t come for free.

 

And if you’re wondering why Controls!Jaime punched a hole in the apartment floor, it was to anchor her foot for the spinkick against the sofa. Just a little Newton’s Third Law Tax so we could have her do the superhero landing pose in the fight later.


	5. Chapter 5

It ought to come as no surprise that the facility at Wolf Creek housing Berkut's operations had been constructed at extraordinary expense, and for the most part, all that money was plain to see in its architecture; of course the deep vertical shaft, massive air filtration system and purpose-built containment modules did not come cheap. But even within that black hole in the black budget, there was a surprisingly expensive line item: the surgical suite. Cutting-edge medical equipment, the fiscal equivalent of a decently-sized housing development, made the expansive room feel quite cramped, but that was just the sideshow to the second-most expensive feature at its center: the main surgical bench, surrounded by a perimeter of heavy translucent plastic curtains and containing a positive air pressure bubble. Which, when filled with a half-dozen nurses and two surgeons all working on the splayed-out form of the most expensive feature of Wolf Creek - a sedated Jaime Sommers - made for a pretty tight fit overall.

Jaime was attached to about a dozen tubes and wire bundles that fed air, replacement Ichor and system commands into her battered frame. The smartskin over most of her chest had been detached and set aside, exposing the replacement parts, reinforced bones and shockproofed internal organs to the harsh light of the overhead illumination. At the head of the surgical bench was a multifunctional array of flatscreens, displaying a simplified but informative version of the internal sensor feeds. Wrist-deep in Jaime Sommers' rib cage, William Anthros watched these monitors as he pulled the last Aramid tendon off of its posterior anchors inside his girlfriend's chest cavity.

"If only all my patients had quick-release snaps," the assistant surgeon Dr. Patal mused. "At least we're not digging out any bone shards this time."

Will winced, but tried to tune out the story as he adjusted Jaime's right arm - and shoulder, and rib cage, as the entire subassembly lied hinged open. Her shoulder rested comfortably on her ear, ninety degrees from its normal orientation, as one whole half of her chest swung to the side on an overstrength titanium hinge mounted underneath the artificial collarbone in her right shoulder. With the last artificial tendon released, Will swung Jaime's artificial ribs, shoulder and arm up above her head, giving him and his team unfettered access to her chest cavity.

"Can we get some light on this, nurse?" Patal asked, while one of the nurses wordlessly took Will's place in holding Jaime's swung-out side in place.

"Yes, doctor," was the answer, and one of the overhead lights was moved to get a better angle on the opening.

"What a goddamned mess," Patal said, craning his neck to look at the damage from another angle. "I tell you, if the software was half as good as our parts, they'd still be peeling Corvus off the wall."

Will reached into Jaime's rib cage again and pulled out a small box about the size of a couple packs of cigarettes.

"Uh, that's the central node retrieved," Patal said. "Make a note of that."

"Noting central node as retrieved," one of the nurses echoed.

"Notes continue," Patal said, reaching his clean left glove up to the lighting to adjust it himself. "No visible organ damage or inflammation 11 hours post-implantation. Your girlfriend's a real trooper, Anthros." He chuckled to himself. "Or it's all the anti-inflammatories we've pumped her Ichor full of. God, I never want to work on another patient again. Would you believe she was in a car accident half a day ago, then went through all this and is still going strong? These augments are something else, Anthros. Their tolerance is just freakish."

Will instantly fixed the other surgeon with a hard glare. "Jaime is **normal**."

"Uh, no, she's **better** ," Patal said. "That's what we're doing all this for, isn't it?"

Will didn't move, hand frozen holding the black box, wires leading into Jaime's chest and towards her skull, his eyes still burning holes in the man on the other side of the operating table.

"You...you know what I mean, Anthros," Patal responded, quickly averting his eyes. "It's a **good** thing. It's the future. Hell, I'll be first in line when we've got the kinks worked out."

Will turned away, retrieved a USB cable from the table, and plugged it into the box. A few taps on the plastic-sealed keyboard, and the screen it up with indicators. "Notes continue," he said. "Segments 7 to 19 are redlined, total write-off. 20 to 24...and 25 are pinged. I want RT on them before we reuse. The other subassemblies look to be in order. Follow-up diagnostic next week."

"Noting 7 to 19 as redlined, 20 to 25 as pinged," the nurse repeated. "Radiographical study on pinged elements and follow-up on remaining segments in seven days. Anything else, Dr. Anthros?"  
"Yes," Will said. "We should do some more bone reinforcement on 9 posterior and 10 posterior, the strain is bigger than expected. Do you concur, Dr. Patal?"  
"Oh!" Patal said. "Oh, sure. Your call, Anthros."  
" **Our** call," Will said. "I don't need you to rubberstamp my decisions."

Dr. Patal nodded, then made a show of looking at the strained ribs clad in brilliant black sheathing. He even turned to the monitors and tapped through the material stress sensor readouts and hm-ed for a bit before finally nodding again. "Yes, I concur," he said. "What...what Dr. Anthros said."  
"Yes, Doctor," the nurse replied.  
Will stared at Patal for a bit longer. "We need four carbon sheets and bonding agent," he said.

"Right away, Doctor," the nurse said.

"I can -" Patal tried to say, but that's about as far as he got before Will snapped at him.

"I'll handle it," Will said. "Why don't you take a break?"  
"Yes," Dr. Patal said. "Yes...Doctor Anthros."

* * *

 

Any and all murmurs in the Wolf Creek conference room stopped when Jonas Bledsoe walked in. Nathan Ambrose, closest to the head of the table, suddenly had to stare very intently at his laptop to make sure he had the connection to the room's projector set up right, while Ruth Truewell straightened her files one more time. Antonio Pope, sitting at the far end of the table, gave Bledsoe a nod, while Jae Kim did not move at all.

"Are we ready?" Bledsoe asked, rounding the room to take his seat at the table.

"Uh," Nathan began, "Dr. Anthros -"

"Won't be joining us," Bledsoe said. "He's got enough to deal with right now."

"What about Ms. Sommers?" Truewell asked.

"I'm told she's fine, physically," Bledsoe said. "We'll see, but we have bigger fish to fry right now. Ambrose?"

"Yeah, so," Nathan began. With a few taps, he brought up a series of pictures - still images from Jaime's perspective, the clearest shots of the chaos in Will's apartment and the subsequent fighting. "It's Corvus," he said. "I don't see a way it couldn't be."

"It looks that way," Bledsoe said. "Facial recognition is certain?"

"High confidence," Nathan said. "Bone structure, geometry, spectra of the smartskin, it's all a very close match to our files. Voiceprint matches, too. If it's someone pretending to be her, they've done a hell of a job. Uh, Jae, can you take movement patterns?"

"Close match," Kim said. Then he said nothing else, and Nathan took a moment to process that.

"So, yeah," Nathan said. "And just logically. The only thing that can look and move like that is an augment."

"She's not a thing," Truewell threw in. "Or was, whatever the case may be. Your theory does not account for the fact that Sara Corvus is dead."

"It's the best fit for the data we have right now," Bledsoe said. "We'll work off the assumption that it is her, for the time being. Two-pronged approach: one, I want our intelligence resources working this on the premise that hiding Sara Corvus from us for two years must have left a track somewhere. Prioritize distinctive signs of manufacture and transport of consumables. Two, I want in-depth analysis of our data. Any and all discrepancies between our files and the data Tin Man gathered. If it's not her...then we have a really big problem. Questions?"

"How about what happens to Jaime?" Truewell asked. "I think that's an obvious one."

"Dr. Anthros is overseeing her restoration," Bledsoe said.

"That is not what I mean, and you know it," Truewell interrupted. "What will...she have to do, now?"

"I think at this point, we need to take every possible precaution for another encounter with Corvus," Bledsoe said. "And Ms. Sommers is the only one who can handle that. On the other hand, we've seen the practical limits of the Tin Man system. The combat algorithms can't handle peer hardware. If we're going to win this fight, it needs to be with a thinking operative. That just adds to the urgency of getting Ms. Sommers up to speed on her training."

"That implies that we can get her on board," Truewell pointed out. "She's been...opposed to any training so far, to put it lightly."

"Then maybe having a bionic killing machine after her and her boyfriend will motivate her," Bledsoe shot back. "This is your department, Truewell. Figure it out."

Truewell glared at Bledsoe, but said nothing in reply but a quick, "Yes, sir."

A silence fell over the table. Nathan was finding so, so many interesting and absorbing things on his laptop to look at, Pope wore that infuriating smug little smile of his, and Kim seemed to have nothing to say about anything. Truewell continued burning holes in Bledsoe's implacable expression, but still was the first one to speak up again.

"What are we going to tell her about what happened?" she asked.

"Only as much as we have to," Bledsoe said. "Somebody tried to kill her and Anthros, she saved them both, then passed out from the stress. She won't remember anything past Tin Man activation."

"You can't know that for sure," Truewell said.

"No, I can't," Bledsoe said. "We're dealing with a lot of firsts here, including selective inhibition of memory formation. Dr. Anthros is certain it'll work, but of course he is. You'd rather tell her the truth, I take it?"

"She is being threatened by a rogue augment - one that we created," Truewell replied. "Not telling her the truth puts her and her sister in even greater danger than they already are in - and she's going to figure it out eventually anyway. Jaime Sommers is not stupid, and when she does figure it out, you'll have **two** pissed-off augments that know about Berkut."

"Oh, we're going to tell her about Corvus," Bledsoe said. "I want that threat front and center in her mind. We can even come clean on her affiliation with us. But if there's a good way to explain what happened after the override to her, I can't think of it. Can you?"

"Not yet," Truewell said.

"Then we're agreed," Bledsoe said. "We're putting enough pressure on her as is. If Tin Man works as intended, then that's a way we can spare Ms. Sommers a lot of complications. Anything else?"

Truewell fell silent. Bledsoe's look swept the room again, until it stopped on Jae Kim.

"Why did the killswitch fail?" Kim asked.

All eyes turned to Nathan, who managed to get a few more taps in before he had to answer. "Uh," he said, and looked up. "I'm...I'm going to look into that."

"See that you do," Bledsoe said. "Until we figure it out, we're through taking chances. If Corvus turns up, we shoot on sight." He looked to Truewell. "One more thing, Truewell. I want an analysis of Corvus's interaction with Ms. Sommers. Get into her head and figure out what her endgame is. I doubt it ends with Dr. Anthros."

"Yes, sir," Truewell replied.

"Good," Bledsoe said. "Kim, I need more countermeasures. You trained Corvus, you're going to train Ms. Sommers to take her on. Start figuring out how."

"I will," Kim said.

"Pope, I need your buddies at the DIA," Bledsoe continued. "We need to figure out where custody of Corvus's body was lost, but keep it under the radar."

"Yes, Sir," Pope answered.

"All right," Bledsoe concluded. "You all know what to do. Get on it."

* * *

 

Jaime woke up again. Weird hospital room, again. Staring up at the ceiling, again. Everything seemed a million miles away, as if she was simply floating in the middle of the ocean, far away from the nightmare. She felt herself take deep, slow breaths. Everything was calm and quiet. Everything was under control.

"Jaime?" she heard Will call to her, and turned her head to see him sitting beside the bed, smiling down at her and grasping her left hand.

Jaime turned away from him and looked over to her right arm. There it was, lying on top of the blanket, and when she raised it up to turn it and look at her hand, it obeyed her will flawlessly. There was nothing wrong with it.

"Jaime?" Will repeated. "Jaime, how do you feel?"

"Tired," Jaime mumbled. "What happened?"

Will grimaced. He had prepared for this, but he wasn't ready. "Jaime," he said, "somebody tried to kill us. She...she tried to kill both of us." He forced a smile. "You saved me. I don't know how you did it, it was...it was over in seconds. But you pushed me to safety. Both of us, I mean." He squeezed her hand. "You saved **us**."

Jaime managed a smile. "That's good." She raised her head and looked around. "Where are we?"  
"Yes, right, well...you know," Will said. "Okay. So what happened was...some safeties kicked in when you passed out." He nodded to a laptop set up on a tray table next to the bed. "You'll be back to normal in a moment, so we can talk. Okay?" He turned away briefly to watch the display and tap a few keys. "Okay. Now. How do you feel now? Better?"

"How would I know?" Jaime asked. "I was out cold, remember? Better. I guess." She sat up in bed. "The last thing I remember was...being in your apartment, and the doorbell ringing."  
"Easy there," Will said. He took another glance at the laptop. "Yes, that's...that's when it happened. I still don't know exactly **what** happened, but…" He sighed. "We were shot at," he said. "Through the windows. I...I watched the security camera feeds while you were out, and...I don't know what to say. I mean, it seems so...so distant. I could see myself, and...and I didn't move, but you did - you carried us both to cover, and the next thing I know you passed out after that." He shook his head. "What matters is that she didn't manage to hurt either of us. I just wouldn't... **could never** forgive myself." He squeezed her hand again. "I'm **so** sorry, Jaime. You were in danger there, all because of **me** , and you **saved** me, and I...I just don't know what I did, what I **ever** did, to deserve you."

"...you know who did this?" Jaime asked. She shook Will's hand off her shoulder. "Where are we, Will?"

Will nodded solemnly. Then he did it again. "We're back at Wolf Creek," he said. "And there are some things we need to talk about. And it's...it's probably for the better if that conversation includes Colonel Bledsoe."

Jaime looked at Will for a moment, then started to scoot off the bed. "Nope," she said. "I am not talking to him, I am getting out of here."

"Okay, that's, well!" Will said, stepping back to give Jaime space. "Uh, Jaime, maybe...I mean, he can answer your questions much better…"

"Don't care," Jaime said, and stepped quickly across the floor to her overnight bag. "I don't **care** , Will. I want to get **out** of here, I am **not** talking to him, and I am **leaving**."

"Uh, Jaime," Will said, fighting for more words as Jaime began dressing herself, shucking the hospital gown and facing away while she dug her undergarments out of the bag. He was considering an appeal to her gratitude for having her life saved when she pulled on her pants, and when she buttoned her blouse he contemplated whether he'd just walk along with her and let the soldiers be the bad guys by not letting them leave, but when Jaime was dressed and turned towards the door, he knew that there was only one argument he could make. "Jaime, stop. You're right. I know who did this. That's...that's because she used to be one of ours." He waited for her to turn, then met her eyes. "Sara Corvus," he said. "She's...she's augmented, too."

Jaime's face flickered through many expressions - shock, confusion, anger, finally settling on fear. "What?" she whispered.

"She was first," Will said. "And I swear - I **swear** to you, Jaime, until an hour ago, I thought she was dead."

"And now?" Jaime asked. Before Will could respond, her eyes went wide. "That...that wasn't an accident, was it. The crash. Tell me you didn't know that, Will. You didn't lie to me about why…why I have these **things** inside me now."

"No!" Will said. "No! I had...I had **no** idea, Jaime. I…" He took a deep breath. "We've got a team on the collision, they were trying to get some answers, but...I never thought...I never expected that to be Corvus. She was dead, Jaime. I saw it. She was **dead**." His eyes swept from left to right as he ran his fingers through his hair. "You don't...you don't know what she's capable of."

"And you do?" Jaime asked. "And how do you know she was dead, Will?" Her eyes narrowed and she took a step towards Will. "What did you do?"

Will was saved from having to answer that when the seal on the airlock door hissed open; Jaime only had to look over her shoulder to see Jonas Bledsoe walking in, with the closest approximation of anger on his face that she had seen so far.

"That's enough, both of you," he said. "My office, now. It's time we had a grown-up conversation."

"I don't care what you want -" Jaime started to say.

"Start caring!" Bledsoe barked. "You and your boyfriend almost got yourselves killed out there by the only woman on this planet who's more dangerous than you. It's way past time that you get over yourself and take this seriously. You, Anthros, your little sister, you are now all officially in the line of fire. The only one who can protect all of you is **you** , Miss Sommers. I don't expect you to like it, you can hate it all you want, but I'm not going to let you walk out there without at least knowing who the **hell** you're up against. Do I make myself clear?"

Jaime glared at Bledsoe, but nodded. "At least it **sounds** like you give a shit about us this time."

Bledsoe snorted. "Follow me," he said.

* * *

 

The silence between the three of them chilled the air on their circuitous path through the Wolf Creek facility; every turn seemed to remind Jaime of the less than wholesome nature of the place, and finally arriving in Bledsoe's office did not brighten the impression. Sure, there was some wood decoration to be found in there, making it seem more like a real office than a concrete cube, but there were no pictures hung from the wall, no bookshelves, not even a superfluous old-school globe - in short, no attempt to signpost that this was the workplace of a human being. Bledsoe also made no attempt to take a seat behind his desk; instead, he walked over to the wall safe, opened it and withdrew a file, which he handed off to Jaime. The paper had only cooled to room temperature half an hour ago, but the smell of fresh toner on it still lingered; obviously a fresh hardcopy run off specifically to show her. The front page simply read "SARA CORVUS".

"You can read that at your leisure, as long as it doesn't leave the facility," Bledsoe said. "But in the interest of time, I can sum it up for you."

Jaime didn't respond, she was already halfway through the first page. Summary of military accomplishments - promoted, demoted, promoted, counseled for alcoholism, _posthumous_ Bronze Star - followed by a scouting report, signed by one William Anthros.

"She wasn't at the top of our list, I think that's fair to say," Bledsoe said. "Insurgents took it out of our hands. It was either let her die and keep waiting for another candidate to get life-threatening injuries, or choose her. Anthros chose her."

"It was the **right** decision," Will said.

"Well, Corvus didn't agree with that," Bledsoe said. "She'd been in a bad place before all that, but waking up here, with half her body replaced...she didn't take it well, to say the least. We learned a lot about how **not** to handle that."

Jaime kept reading. Overview of the procedures - "half" was underselling how much of her had been changed, and there was plenty to read between the terse lines describing her first days at the facility.

"Eventually, we came to an arrangement," Bledsoe said. "The DoD was breathing down our necks to get some use of their new bionic supersoldier. Dr. Truewell did her best to advocate for giving Corvus more time, but in the end Anthros - Anthony Anthros, my... _predecessor_ \- had to play the politics game. He ordered Corvus into training. And she knocked it out of the park. Whatever her problems were, Corvus was a good Marine, and the bionics performed better than expected. Two months in, we felt confident enough for a field test. And when that went well, we gave the green light for her first real mission."

Jaime kept reading. Covert operations in…"China?" she muttered.

"That was the wrong call," Bledsoe admitted. "We'd spent months building her back up, but this pushed her right back over the edge - and we didn't even notice at first."

Jaime kept reading. Incident report of the breakout attempt, casualty lists, a new, **real** death certificate - and a post-mortem on the security failures of that night.

"We lost fourteen men in half that many minutes, including Anthony Anthros," Bledsoe said. "Corvus knew exactly how to do it. But at the end of the day, we just got lucky, if you can call it that. Caught up to her before she could make good her escape, out in the woods, and that was her last stand. She had sabotaged our safeguards, so finally, I gave the order to go lethal. My men lit her up. What we brought back - we thought she was dead. We handed the remains over to the DoD and shut everything down to try to figure out where we had gone wrong. And we would still be on standby if you hadn't come along." He took a breath. "So you see, I have two problems right now, Miss Sommers. You're one of them. She's the other. And we've got to figure out a solution together. I understand that you'd rather have nothing to do with any of this, but...you do. And if I let you just run away, I wouldn't be doing anyone a favor, least of all you. Are we clear so far?"

"I don't see keeping me hostage and forcing me to become an killer for you as doing me a favor," Jaime said as she scanned the last of the pages.

"I'm getting that loud and clear," Bledsoe said. "But the fact of the matter is that Sara Corvus is out there now, and she's going to try to kill you again - and if not you, your boyfriend. So the question is, what are you going to do about it?"

Jaime fingered her way back through the file for a minute before responding. "Have you tried talking to her?"

" **Talk**?" Will burst out. "Jaime, this...this ice-cold b-"

"What Dr. Anthros is trying to say," Bledsoe cut in, "is that we talked to her plenty during the time she was with us. Daily talks with Dr. Truewell. Hours of therapy and discussion and negotiations. What we didn't figure out until it was too late was her talent for showing us what we wanted to see. I've been in this covert operations business for a while, Miss Sommers, so you can imagine how much I'm kicking myself that we didn't dig deeper." Another breath. "And she didn't exactly reach out to us after we shot her down. Even if she did, I would not trust a single word out of her mouth. At the end of the day, all she wants is Dr. Anthros here dead for what she believes he did to her, and if that ends up putting her out of her misery, all the better in her eyes. That's not exactly what I'd call an ideal negotiating position."

"It's not a negotiating position **at all** ," Will growled. "She's a...she's **literally** a government-trained assassin who won't rest until she's taken **everything** from me. She shot at us, Jaime, and she didn't care one iota about you being in the line of fire. Hell, the whole **reason** you're here now is that **she** rammed our car off the road! With a **garbage truck**! If things had gone even **slightly** different, you would be **dead** now, Jaime. **I** would be dead. And God knows who she'd fixate on next, who else she would try to murder to get her satisfaction. That woman won't stop until she is **stopped**. And you want to **talk** to her?"

"I - I just think that...that maybe we should **try**!" Jaime said. "I don't know why, but I just think that going straight to killing her is... **wrong**!"

"It's not what I want, and I'm pretty sure it's not what Dr. Anthros wanted when he risked his career to save her life," Bledsoe said. "As of right now, the only thing that I know can stop her is a half dozen men with assault rifles putting lead into her until she falls down." He paused for a moment. "Insofar as there are options, they all come down to you, Miss Sommers. You're the only one who could potentially go up against Corvus and match her. But that's going to take more than fond wishes. You're going to have to find her, catch up to her, and then - **then** we can try to talk her down, or subdue her, or...neutralize her. But right now, without you? I've only got men with guns."

Jaime crossed her arms. "I won't 'neutralize' her."

"In my experience," Bledsoe said, "people end up doing a whole lot of things they said they won't do when they have to. What if Corvus comes after your sister Rebecca? Dangles her in front of you, gun to her head? I don't know what you'd do then. Do you?"

Jaime went silent, and looked away from Bledsoe for a moment.

"It's all up to you now, Miss Sommers," Bledsoe said. "All I can do is offer you our help. Make no mistake, this is my mess and I'm going to do everything I can to make it right. This won't work without you. With you...we just might have a chance. What do you say?"

Jaime stared at the wall a second longer, then looked back at Sara Corvus' file. She fingered through it one more time. "Fine," she whispered.

"I'm so sorry," Will said. "I...I never meant for this -"

"I think we all get that," Bledsoe cut in. "Just so we're clear, Miss Sommers, this arrangement means that, starting tomorrow, you'll be here during work hours and receiving intensive training; we'll provide an appropriate cover job and compensation. I assume your...current employer does not stand on two weeks notice."

"Only until the end of the week," Jaime said. It was hard to speak up with her mouth suddenly so dry. "I have one more shift."

"How much?" Bledsoe asked. Getting no response, Bledsoe spoke up again. "I assume it's a question of money, but I need your head in this, 100%. Whatever you owe on your credit card or rent, just tell me and we can cover it. But you're just going to have to miss that one last shift. How you do you it, that's your call."

"I...I can call someone, maybe…" Jaime's eyes stayed in her lap. "Maybe pay them a bit to take it."

"I've got fifty ready to go on site," Bledsoe said. "Will that be enough to cover your expenses or do we need to stop at a bank?"

Jaime shrugged. "Fifty bucks should cover it."

Bledsoe smirked. "Fifty **thousand** , Miss Sommers," he said. "And you can keep the briefcase."

Jaime shook her head. "No, I don't want your money." She hauled herself to her feet. "I'm doing this to protect Will and Becca - but you don't own me. Just because you stuck me with robot limbs doesn't mean you **own** me - and I won't let you buy me, either." She turned towards the door. "I'm going home. Will, you can come if you want, but I'm not staying here another second I don't have to."

"Suit yourself," Bledsoe said. "Training starts tomorrow 0900."

Jaime spun on her heel and walked out the door.

"She'll...she'll come around," Will said, watching her afterimage long after she'd left.

"She'd better," Bledsoe said.

"She took it much better than I thought she would," Will said.

"Truewell's very good at finding pressure points," Bledsoe said. "There's a room at the Hyatt for you."

"I'm...no," Will said. "No, I'm going with her."

"You do that, then," Bledsoe said. "But there's a room at the Hyatt for you."

"...right," Will said. "Well, if that is **all** , then."

"One more thing," Bledsoe said. "Where's your field kit? Where's your sidearm?"

"In the bedroom," Will said. "I mean, it was, I'm sure Ginsburg's men took it when they cleaned up...right?" After a pause he added. "I don't know."

"Exactly my problem," Bledsoe said. "You don't know. You got stupid out there because of her. And you need to make up your mind where you stand on this. Either you figure out how to protect yourself...or you build me a stable Tin Man."

"I will **not** -"

"For God's sake, Anthros," Bledsoe cut him off again. "It's hard enough keeping a straight face when your girlfriend is moralizing at me. This is a question of survival. **Your** survival. So are you going to fight your own battles, or are you going to make her do it?"

Will said nothing.

"Get out of my office," Bledsoe said.

* * *

 

Will did get out of that office, and even if the sightlines through Wolf Creek hadn't been so open, finding Jaime would have been no great task; he saw her standing at the end of the walkway up against the central column, standing just besides the closed elevator doors. Will swallowed his apprehension and walked toward her.

"Let's get out of here, huh?" he said to her, trying to smile.

Jaime turned on a heel and faced the elevator doors.

Will sighed as he step closer and reached past her to press the call button, which lit up green after a brief scan of his thumbprint. "If I could take it all back -" he began.

"Which part?" Jaime snapped. "Lying to me about what you do? Cutting me apart and filling me with computers and robot parts? Forcing me to be a government assassin? Or putting me and Becca in the crosshairs of a rogue bionic killer?"

"...I know you're angry, Jaime," Will said, "but can you please try to see this my way for a second? It's...it's not like I **wanted** any of this. You understand that, don't you? All I **ever** wanted was to help people. It's...it's not my fault one of those people went crazy. Okay? You...you want to be angry at someone, be angry at Corvus. Believe me, she deserves it."

Jaime didn't respond, at least verbally. She bent over, grabbed the small wastebin by the elevator - and with a scream of frustration and rage, threw it against the corridor corner with enough force to crimp and bend it in half like she stomped on an empty can. "She didn't do **that** to me, Will," she shouted, and turned on him. " **You** did." She stepped right up to him, and Will shrunk back from her against the elevator doors, eyes darting left to right in a desperate search for someone, anyone who might rush to back him up. "Tell me you couldn't have just kept me alive. You couldn't have used...parts that wouldn't make me into the military's latest assassin."

"You would have died!" Will said, a bit louder than he had planned to. "Jaime, it was the only right choice I could make, as a **doctor**. There's always…" He sighed. "There are always choices. But you were dying, Jaime. You were dying and I had to make a choice, put all the pros and cons on a scale and figure out what to do. I don't know what would have happened if I had kept you on life support and waited for different parts. I don't know. I just...I did what I did to save your life. You don't know Colonel Bledsoe...he would have let you die if I had given him the chance." He tried to meet her eyes. "And I couldn't let you die."

Jaime tried to maintain her glare, but she couldn't hold it for long. "...okay," she whispered, and looked away herself. "I understand." She wrapped her arms around Will, and didn't let go until the elevator doors opened behind them. When she did, he stood frozen in place, taking a few seconds to start talking again.

"I'm...I'm…" he said, then shook his head and swung out his arm to indicate the empty elevator cab. "Let's just go home," he added.

Jaime nodded and wiped her eyes. "Yeah, please, let's go home."

Inside the cab, Will pressed the button for the top floor. The doors closed and the cab started moving, smooth and silent. "I have a hotel room," he said. "It's...we can go there. It'll be difficult to explain to Rebecca why we came back after we made that big show about leaving for my place."

"No," Jaime said, shaking her head. "You can go there if you want. I need to go home."

"You're going to have to lie to her," Will said.

Jaime scowled at Will. "I'm going to be doing that a lot, apparently. I'd better start now." She stepped back against the other wall and folded her arms. "I'll see you tomorrow, Will."

"...tomorrow," Will echoed. He watched the elevator panel; not much farther to go to the top level now. "We can talk more tomorrow," he said.

Jaime said nothing, and before Will could say something else, the elevator doors opened to the security checkpoint leading to the exterior elevator, where Antoine Ginsburg was waiting for them. He looked decently awake, having switched his black tactical gear for a black suit, white shirt, no tie. Without missing a beat, he fell in with the two.

"Captain," Will said.

"We have a car ready," Ginsburg said, giving Jaime a quick once-over. "Just tell me where we're going, Doctor."  
"Hyatt for me, then take her home," Will said.

"Can do," Ginsburg said. As the exterior elevator arrived and they stepped in, Ginsburg caught Jaime's glance and gave her a brief smile. "Don't worry," he said. "Your sister's safe. We've had a security team watching your place ever since you left."

Jaime's brow hardened again at that. She focused on the door in front of them, willing it to open so she could get out of Wolf Creek that much sooner.

"If you could just drive us, Captain," Will said. "We're pretty beat."

"...copy that, Doctor," Ginsburg said, and then wisely shut up.

* * *

 

All the lights are out in the apartment when Jaime closed and locked the front door behind her. She looked out the window and down the block - a few houses down, she could make out the outlines of two men in a black late-model sedan, the only black car on the block. She glared at them as hard as she could, then dropped the blinds behind her. She walked down the hall to her room, but stopped at Becca's door. Blue light streamed underneath, and she could hear the ticking of keys from inside.

Jaime pushed the blinker button for Becca's lights, and waited.

The ticking of keys stopped after a few seconds, then a laptop was shut and put aside, feet touched the ground, steps closed in on the door. Jaime could almost swear she heard Becca's heartbeat. Then, the door opened, and a bleary-eyed Becca looked up at her big sister. "Jaime?" she asked, watching the tears on her sister's face glisten in the light shining from her room. "What..." she tried to say, her own eyes already misting up. "What's going on?" she whispered.

"I…" Jaime managed a laugh, then sniffled and wiped her eyes. "I've had a pretty hard night." She wrapped her arms around Becca. "I love you, Becca."

Becca returned the hug, and then neither of them counted how long they embraced, until Becca finally tightened her hug one last time before letting go and looking up at Jaime again. "Wanna tell me about it?" she asked.

Jaime opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again and shook her head. "I...I can't -" she stammered, then broke down into proper sobs and collapsed back into Becca's arms.

"Okay, okay," Becca cooed, and eased both her and Jaime down onto her bed. Jaime loosened her grip just long enough for Becca to clear her laptop off and pull the covers up, but then she pulled Becca back into herself. "It'll be okay, Jaime," Becca said, returning the embrace herself. "It'll be okay." She carried on comforting her big sister until they both fell asleep.

* * *

 

_Commentary: "Dark & Gritty"_

Writing a self-billed dark & gritty story is a heck of a lot more difficult than I expected when I originally set out to write Rebuilt. I think we're all familiar with reimaginings that promise to be "edgy" or "realistic", but they tend to fall into a few common traps: either they only put on a dark coat of paint but pull all the punches, sprinkle on twisty soap opera personal tragedies to keep the characters in a perpetual emotional rollercoaster, or everyone's turned into such a jerk that you stop caring whether anyone actually succeeds.

The key to making this work, I think, is not for each character to have some sort of scoreboard of their good and bad traits so everyone precisely balances out into some flavor of antihero or antivillain, but simply to keep in mind what the characters want to achieve, figure out how it puts them into conflict with each other (or themselves!) and then go for it. And above all, resist the temptation to "fix" things. I know this may sound hypocritical coming from somebody who's writing what could fairly be called fixfic, but bear with me for a moment. What do I mean by "fixing" things? I mean change without follow-through. Every time we write a scene where, for example, Jaime protests her treatment at the hands of the Berkut crew, I have to fight the instinct to "fix" her. Wouldn't it be so much easier if she would just shut up and color inside the lines? I mean, it's only "realistic" that someone in her position would be intimidated by all those military people with guns and go along with things, right? Things would go so much faster and then we could get to the parts where she bionic-punches bad guys in the face. But we'd still be able to call our story "dark & gritty" because OH LOOK AT ALL THAT ANGST OVER HER TRANSFORMATION YOU GUYS.

Luckily I have Kasey to push back on it when this threatens to creep into the story, because that would miss the core of Jaime's character. Jaime is not okay with what is happening to her. Sure, she's devastated by the changes that happened to her, but more than that she's pissed at the people who did it and that they want to take over her life now. So she's gonna stand up for it, even when that makes things harder for her or for others. You can't have a quote-unquote "strong female character" in your story who just folds in the face of adversity and play it off like the lesson of the day, and (maybe even worse) have her come back in full rebellious swing the next time we see her. You're not "fixing" a story problem real quick, you're setting up a character betraying her principles and herself. And that might even be justifiable! Maybe the situation really was that bad or she had a different reason for playing along. But you have to follow through. She has to look inside herself and reflect on what just happened and why she did that and what's gonna happen the next time she's in that kind of situation. When that happens, you have to deal with the character's actions and their repercussions for herself and others as the story continues.

Thesis: what makes "dark & gritty" work is consequences. Nothing your characters do happens in a vacuum. Sure, not every bad move comes back to haunt them - that would quickly get ridiculous - but it builds a pattern of behaviour that, sooner or later, bites everyone in the ass. And then they have to make another choice, and face the consequences of **that**. To flip perspective a bit (and talk about a character whose whole deal could be summed as "consequences"), let's look at Will Anthros for a moment.

Our version of Will is both one of the easiest and hardest characters to write for me. It's easy to come up with his nervous excuses and science babble, but it's hard to keep him acting consistent with who he thinks he is without glossing over what he's actually doing. Will is well aware of his involvement in many of the events that led up to this point, and he sees the causal connection between what he did and what happened, but he cannot admit his moral responsibility. It's always somebody else's fault, because Will's black and white view of the world (admittedly a lot of black with only a few white splotches) does not allow for him to share the blame, because then he would be someone he doesn't want to be, and Will is **desperate** to be what he thinks a good guy is. To uphold that image of himself as a victim of circumstances beyond his control, he will do a lot, even bend the truth and twist things to make himself look better...but he also can't stand thinking of himself as a liar, and he really really wants to make his relationship with Jaime perfect, so he has to rationalize that, too. The result of all that is the tightly-wound guy you see on the page, arrogant and superior one second, dorkily trying to navigate his social interactions with Jaime the next, and seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown when things get a little too hot.

It's not the Will of the TV series. But that guy had the advantage of dying before he ever had to deal with the consequences of what he did. That lucky bastard.

And while I'm ranting, let me close this section with the announcement of a moratorium on the words "realism" and "realistic". I hate the idea of realism in fiction, because realism, at least the way it's commonly understood...doesn't matter. Again, bear with me, please. "Realism" is a rhetorical bludgeon. It's the cheapest possible shot you can take when you criticise a work of fiction. "Oh, that's not realistic, because (insert stupid preconception here)!" is such a tired refrain, and it can be used to beat down any idea you don't like, because who can argue that "more realism!" is bad, right? The thing is, if the cheeky parenthetical did not tip you off, what people think is "realistic" is often just a reflection of their own biases, anecdotes from their personal experience and - not least - regurgitating things from other media they've been led to accept as "realistic". Once the realism argument is deployed, the onus immediately falls to the other side to either come up with supporting documentation for why their take actually **is** realistic (example: women in military service - much more common throughout history than you'd think, look it up!), or argue at length for why they, in this particular case, should be given dispensation to deviate from reality for the sake of art. (Insert stock "I don't get what the big deal with all this artsy-fartsy stuff is" lowbrowing here.)

I submit not-so-humbly that no work has ever been improved by this kind of "realism". See, the kind of "realism" that actually makes good stories is verisimilitude, the "feeling real" of a work of fiction, and that doesn't come from conforming to how you think things work "in real life", but from building an internally consistent fictional world and playing by its rules. A sci-fi story is not improved by, say, a person of color facing random racist comments from other characters because "that happens in real life all the time", but it gains when the characters are stuck on a hostile planet and realize that no, there's no previously unmentioned "teleport" setting on their rayguns and that instead they're gonna have to figure out a way to signal for rescue with what they have on hand. When your fiction is Reality Unless Otherwise Noted, this can become a bit hair-split-y, I'll admit, but never forget that the master you must serve above all is the story, not whatever incredibly limited slice of "reality" you may have personally experienced.

Phew, I feel better with that off my chest. And on that note, we wish you a (belated) happy holidays and look forward to continuing in 2017!

**Author's Note:**

> And there's our first chapter. If you've seen how we do on our stories, you may know that we've occasionally included some commentary at the end of chapters on characters or tradecraft or gear. We plan to keep doing that, but nothing we write down here is essential to enjoying the story itself. We decided (after early missteps) this was the best way to show our work without bogging everything down in long in-character expospeak.
> 
> So, what's to note here?
> 
> Will and Jaime have a discussion about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This was our chance to establish a few aspects of the characters early: Will as the aloof-ish technocrat who's quick to speak confidently about things he doesn't quite actually know, contrasted with Jaime actually being an avid reader of classic English fiction.
> 
> Different states of "done"-ness don't just apply to beef - poultry and pork can also be cooked to rare and medium, but generally aren't due to food safety issues. It's a bit more common with game birds, especially pheasants, because the lean meat can quickly become very dry. The common cheat is to add extra fat by wrapping the meat in bacon, but if your avantgarde restaurant is really going for the subtler natural pheasant taste, they would want to avoid that.
> 
> We've decided to go with the spelling of "Sara Corvus" going forward. We think it looks better. Further, Jaime gets a new middle name because "Wells" didn't work for us, cute reference to the original series aside. We'll make up for that. (Also: "Ruth Truewell", "Jae Kim". We may never know why BW 2007 had these names inconsistent between the pilot and later eps, but we had to pick a variant and went with it.)
> 
> Here's the first part where we're sticking firmly with the story taking place in 2008. Will's first aid treatment of Jaime with tourniquets and clotting agent is directly informed by US military experiences in the Global War on Terror. Although tourniquets were traditionally looked down upon for quickly making limbs unviable due to cut-off blood flow, soldiers today can get evacuated and treated much more quickly than even a decade or two ago. Preventing blood loss was also identified as an extremely important factor in prognosis for recovery, and the traditional first aid mantra ABC (airway, breathing, circulation) has made way for MARCH (Massive bleeding, airway, respiration, circulation, hypothermia) in military use. In another way, however, Will's 2008 gear is already behind the times: nowadays, clotting agent is usually no longer used as loose powder or granules, but integrated into wound dressings. This helps to keep it in contact with the wound and also mitigates some side effects - densely packed first-generation clotting powder generates a lot of heat when used, leading to burns and other tissue damage, and surgeons have sometimes found it difficult to remove the material from a wound for further treatment.
> 
> The base at Wolf Creek - with its large vertical underground shaft - gets a bit of an expansion in our story. You'll see more of it later - and we'll get to why it's actually kind of a bad idea.
> 
> Perfluorodecalin is a chemical noted for its ability to dissolve and carry high amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and has been at the heart of attempts to both create artificial blood and practical liquid breathing setups. (In fact, it is in use for liquid breathing right now, though only in hospital settings and for partial ventilation - nobody has figured out how to create a viable fully liquid breathing setup yet, mostly because it's actually a big hassle to move enough fluid in and out of the lungs. Sorry, Abyss.) We'll go into more detail about Ichor at a later date, but suffice it to say it's a little more involved than this.
> 
> DoD = Department of Defense. SecDef = Secretary of Defense. Yeah, we're going with Berkut being a (shady) part of the government instead of a private organization. Sorry, but we just couldn't buy the amount of access and resources Berkut had coming from an organisation without government backing.
> 
> We love reviews and comments! Let us know what you think. We'll do our best to respond and engage.


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